Peace of Mind Organizing

Great (knitting) discoveries while decluttering

3 October 2012

One of the most fun parts of helping clients declutter is finding great stuff. My favorite thing to hear is, “I’ve been looking for that!” I also love finding money, which happens with surprising frequency.

When I worked with Aby last week on one of my home offices, I didn’t find any cash. But I did uncover some knitting projects that I had completely forgotten about. That’s almost like finding gold.

There were a couple of little felted bags, one finished down to the button, the other waiting to be felted. Who knew?

There was a nearly finished scarf, made from a fun thick-and-thin super bulky yarn that my friend Sally had given me years ago. I finished that one right up within a day or two of finding it. (It was knit on US17 needles. If you’re a knitter, you know that sucker knit up quickly.)

There were a couple of projects I’d abandoned because they were miserable to knit. With Aby’s encouragement, I just ripped them out, right then and there and put the yarn back into circulation.

And there was an almost-finished baby afghan that’s to die for pretty. (It’s a mitered-square blanket similar to this one only slightly brighter.) I just have two long seams to do and it will be finished. And, guess what? A friend is having a baby, so now I’m motivated to get seaming. I promise to post a photo before I give it away because, if you ask me, it’s pretty spectacular.

I’d run out of knitting projects (or at least I thought I had) and was just about to buy some yarn to start a new one. Instead, I finished the bulky scarf and now I’m working on the second of a pair of arm warmers, made out leftover silk-and-baby-llama yarn. I’d knit one and even started the second (the starting is the hard part when you’re using double-pointed needles for small-circumference items). I don’t know why I started that project, or why I stopped, but winter’s coming and my arms get cold, so I’m glad to start knitting it again.

Just exploring my yarn stash has reinvigorated my yen for knitting. (Cooler temperatures have a hand in that too.) I store my yarn in a bank of Elfa drawers and I’m really delighted that the organizational system I set up for my yarn stash and knitting needles has held up over the last four years.

One of my favorite drawers of the dozen or so in my yarn unit is the one that’s full of nothing but yarn ball bands (which provide information about the yarn), with a few swatches thrown in:

It may look a little messy, but it makes me very happy just to paw through the contents of that drawer.

Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, knitting, storage, wips, yarn

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