Life's a Stitch

And more recently life’s a creative adventure with some travel thrown in.

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Recognize that feeling?

Please excuse my absence. Grant writing season has been extended this year like our endless winter into spring. And my personal life has been wrapped up in paperwork excitement, the good part of which includes a group purchase of a place in warmer climes. More on that when it's a done deal. 

I cleaned out a closet tonight. Not a real closet, but it gave me that cleaner closet feeling going through my Ravelry "favorites." I am not good at following that guideline "if you haven't used it in two years…." Still, after my enthusiastic cull, I have enough in that Ravelry closet to last many lifetimes.

On to the real closets. We have a retirement plan of action that includes starting mine a year ahead of C in which time I will get the house in order for selling. A year is optimistic, so four years out, to make the job easier, we are sifting through the remnants of an active family of five. A family so consumed by work and school that it seems we forgot to plan a second life for outgrown clothes, read books and loved toys. We just stuffed them under beds, in closets…

Which leads me to the stash. C rearranged the knitting/computer room last night. He emerged with a look of understanding, one I don't associated with my knitting addiction.

"Ah," he said,"I now know why they call it a stash." 

My nervous laughter, "Why is that?"

"Because it's stashed everywhere: under the bed, in the closet, every drawer, in hampers, rubbermaid containers, in baskets, some of it still it their shipping boxes."

He admitted he has no room to talk with his piles of wood, inside and out, awaiting their turn, so to speak, on the lathe. 

I do know I'm not as bad as some in my knitting group. There's one whose stash has grown so large that she's rented a storage locker. You know who you are. But the prize goes to two other sweet souls, who have rented a "studio" in an industrial part of town, primarily for stash management. 

I'd be interested to know, where do you keep yours? Any unusual strategies? The microwave? The doghouse? 

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14 responses to “Recognize that feeling?”

  1. Monika Avatar
    Monika

    We culled our belongings last year for the renovations. We needed two large bins in our driveway, filled them to the prim. At first we were selective, but towards the end, we just chucked it. We have a storage room rented too, but it’s full of boxes of books, my daughters belongings, my husbands belongings. They both have no permanent place yet. If they ever will, I’m not sure they’ll miss their stuff in storage.
    My yarn has still its place in the house, mainly in my studio, and in the closet in my bedroom, but it has to share the available space with fiber. :o)

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  2. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Nothing unusual now, but at one point I did have it stashed in 7 foot tall TV cabinet. I used plastic shelves to organize it in the TV cavity. The shelves in the bottom compartment where accessories usually reside were perfect for clear shoe boxes. Now I have a large closet in a spare bedroom. Things are stored in Iris Drawers, Rubbermaids, etc. There is a cedar line closet just waiting for my stuff, but Hubster has it torn up while he does a fix up on our bonus room. A bookcase holds the books in the spare room with some more boxes of yarn.

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  3. Linda Cannon Avatar
    Linda Cannon

    i know how you feel, we need to do the same thing. We move into this house in 1996 and we had already pared down once. Somehow every space is occupied, and it feels somewhat overwhelming. I started on my “sewing room” and due to circumstances it isn’t finished and stares at me everytime I look for yarn.
    I widh you the best as we all try and eliminate. When I lost my job 2 years ago, I culled 10 black garbage bags of clothes that I hadn’t worn in ages and wasn’t going to. Anything you can do is good. At our house the books win and we have to do something about that soon.

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  4. Maureen Avatar
    Maureen

    My three rubbermaid tubs in the pantry have NOTHING on a rented storage locker. My goodness, I can’t imagine the amount of yarn that there would have to be in a stash that size.
    I’ve found myself in a state of temporary semi-retirement (AKA layoff) and I always dreamed about ALL the things I could do with spare time, organizing the household being one thing. Sadly I haven’t been quite as productive as I’d hoped over these past two months. We’ll blame it on the pending graduation of our youngest….goodbye STA.

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  5. Dorothy Avatar
    Dorothy

    Ah, the great stash reveal. First of all, I comfort myself that I’m not as bad as my friend who took to storing some of her fabric stash in her car! The majority of mine is in bins in my sewing room and a couple of large Rubbermaid storage containers in the garage and attic. I think you’re wise to get a head start on it. You can take your time. I acquired yarn, fabric, patterns, etc. while I was working for the time during retirement when I would have less money and more time. Now it’s time to pay the piper!

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  6. LoriAngela Avatar
    LoriAngela

    I thought my stashed looked lovely in cubbies in the “second gaming room” but my husband cleared a space in the pantry downstairs for it. Now I can hardly get at it. I plan to put it in the downstairs kitchen where my sewing machine has been relegated and embrace the space. Doesn’t it sound like our basement is too big?
    My good stuff is in candy jars on the window seat of the sunroom.

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  7. karen, sil Avatar
    karen, sil

    Yayy!! A “POA”. Love it! I know you’ll both so enjoy retirement, and, It. Will. Come. About! Let me know when it’s time for me to come out and help “purge” a few things. Miss you guys!

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  8. Suzanne Avatar
    Suzanne

    We’ve been cleaning out the attic. My parents are in their 80’s and like setting up at this one flea market/tag sale type event that is held twice a year. It was much easier than I thought to let go of some stuff.
    As for the stash, I have most of it in buckets in the cellar. They are numbered and their contents are in a notebook. Not sure of the real count as it got pretty high and then I bought 3 gray and 3 green buckets and have started numbering they gray #1, gray #2, Green #1, etc. This isn’t counting the stash in my room. I really need to donate some of it away. I have been doing a little but really need to just part with what I will never use.

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  9. Ellen Avatar
    Ellen

    It’s been nearly a year since our infamous trip to the “studio,” and my insurance still hasn’t covered my ambulance fee.
    I finally got around to cleaning out my knitting room, aka the granddaughters’ toy room, and my stash is fairly neatly relegated to baskets and wicker. All of the 100 percent cotton (used for baby hats and dish cloths, etc.) made its way upstairs to drawers in one of my girls’ former bedrooms.
    I don’t think my hubby is exaggerating when he says it’ll take us ten years to ever get our place purged. His way of cleaning used to be to throw everything into a bin and transport it to the garage loft. We have not only what’s in our house, but also the carriage-style garage, loft, and two ample sheds filled to the brim. Help!

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  10. evelyn Avatar
    evelyn

    I fear telling the truth about what I did with my stash – it may cause heart failure for some. I bought a new condo with a very quick possession date and had to make some really quick decisions. I kept all my cotton, a bit of sock yarn, and donated the rest to a senior’s assisted living home. I made a whole lot of people very happy. Me? Not so much. But now I get to start over and you just know I’m going to be way more organized this time around. Right? Right?

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  11. Liberty Avatar
    Liberty

    I have noticed that since I started selling yarn, I have bought much less. Its my book stash that needs an intervention. LOL

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  12. Valeria Avatar
    Valeria

    3500 books, only about 75 devoted to knitting; 7 large bins stuffed in the guest room closet and 1 single woman in her 50s fantasizing about a 3 bedroom house where one room could be a computer/sewing/knitting and bookbinding room.

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  13. Rebekah Avatar
    Rebekah

    That is hilarious. My stash was in my second bedroom till it consumed it and there was no more room for Basil the parrot. Now its on shelves in Space Bags and Boxes in the Basement, and in the closet in Basil’s room, but its starting to spill out into the room room so I may have to reorganize again.

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  14. Lynne Avatar
    Lynne

    I have a cedar closet for my stash. and a few bags here and there. Whenever the topic comes up, my husband will snootily say, ” Do you see me with stashes of wood around just in case I want to make something in my workshop?”
    Oh, shut up, JR.

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