The life changing magic of organizing yarn

Spring is often a time for cleaning and organizing.

And us knitters are notorious for having yarn EVERYWHERE.

In 2010 the world was taken by storm with a little book by a Japanese woman, Marie Kondo.

Her philosophy about decluttering your home was the foundation for The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

So what can we learn about managing our stash from this bestseller?

Here’s three of our biggest takeaways…

1. Destash first, store later

Instead of jumping into categorizing and and organizing first thing, Marie recommends getting rid of things you don’t really want to keep first.

We want to fill our spaces with yarn that “sparks joy” within us when we see it.

So how do we make it easier to discard those unwanted skeins?

2. Hold every item

Admittedly this is a little “woo-woo” but Kondo suggests holding each item in your hands to see how it makes you feel.

If you don’t have any strong attachment to the yarn then consider letting it go.

That doesn’t mean you need to hold every purple skein of simply soft in your collection (one will do fine 😉), but feel the yarn and remind yourself why you bought it, or how you got it.

Make one pile to get rid of, and one to keep.

3. It feels good to let go

Sometimes its hard to get rid of “our” things. They belong to us! We should keep them!

But the reality is holding onto yarn we’re never going to use just makes it hard to focus on using the stuff we’re actually excited to knit with.

Not only will you have more space in your yarn closet, you’ll have more clarity of mind not worrying about what you’re going to do with that Red Heart Great Aunt Florence left you when she died.

PLUS the yarn will be going to someone who can turn it into something useful!

So what do you do with the yarn you want to get rid of?

There are three great options:

• Trade the yarn at a local yarn swap or in one of the yarn swap forums on Ravelry, Knitting Paradise, or Facebook
• Sell the yarn of Facebook marketplace, at a garage sale, or on Craigslist
• Give it away by donating it to a local school, thrift store, or put it up for free online

Then it’s time to organize, but we’ll talk about that in another issue.

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