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Destash 2018 Challenge

Last week, with Christmas visitors looming, I decided it was time to clean up my office/guest room/craft room/cat habitat. I knew I had a lot of fabric, fiber, and yarn piled up and disorganized in the closet, so I decided to go full-Kondo and pull it all out for some magical art of tidying.

It was at this point I realized I have a problem…

Maybe that doesn’t look too bad. Let me give you the reverse shot, featuring my other cat:

Not featured: about 20 more skeins in a shoe hanger behind my door, and other skeins scattered throughout the house.

I was rapidly approaching SABLE status.

SABLE, for the uninitiated, stands for “Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy”. Basically, you have so much yarn, you’ll croak before you can get through all of it.

Though anxiously worrying about my mortality is usually one of my favorite pastimes, this revelation sent me into a bit of a tailspin. In addition to buying yarn and fabric any time the chance is presented to me (this is not an exaggeration — I somehow managed to buy fabric at a fish market recently), I’ve been spinning a lot lately. So I’m making yarn faster than I can use it, which is helping my blood pressure but not my closet space.

Then I went through my WIPs (works-in-progress) and discovered:

• 6 cardigans
• 1 shawl
• 1 scarf
• 2 hats
• 3 socks

Obviously, something has to change. I love buying and making yarn, and fabric stores are my happy place. But if I don’t get through some of my stash, my likely cause of death will be “crushed under a pile of crafting supplies.”

So I decided I needed to go big on my New Year’s resolution this year:

NO BUYING MORE YARN, FIBER, OR FABRIC IN 2018.

?

More specifically, here are my rules:

1. No buying yarn, fiber, or fabric.
2. Finish all my WIPs (or frog them) before starting something new.

And because I’m more of a moderator than abstainer, I have a few planned exceptions:

1. I’m keeping my Paradise Fibers fiber-of-the-month club membership — I like it too much, and I’m afraid it will be full next year if I cancel
2. Buying tools and notions are okay, as long as they are needed to help finish stash/WIP projects.
3. I can accept gifted materials, but I won’t solicit anyone else to buy things for me.
4. I can only buy yarn or material if it’s necessary for a commissioned work project (pattern writing, etc) — this shouldn’t be an issue since most companies provide yarn support for writing patterns

This is going to be hard, so I need some accountability partners. I’m an Obliger, so I’ll never stick to this unless other people are expecting me to follow through. So I’m inviting people to join along! Here’s an image you can use on social media:

Follow me on Instagram to check on my progress, and use the hashtag #destash2018 to join in! As part of my destash, I’ll be holding a few giveaways throughout the year.

Are you joining? Let me know in the comments!

(In case you’re wondering what all those self-help terms are above, follow the links to Gretchen Rubin’s blog — I’m obsessed with her Happier podcast.)

Categorized in: Musings