destash

It's been about a year since moving into the new house, and I've decided that I'm going to get in the habit of an annual purge. I know I did a massive unload just before moving here, but it is pretty amazing to see what I am capable of amassing in twelve months. It's not out of control or anything, but I sure can see how not purging annually would lead me right back to the same mess I was in.

So far I have found some doozys. Like way too many bottles of old and gunked up nailpolish. Or bottles under the bathroom sink with only a bit of conditioner left because I'd ran out of the partnering shampoo. Oh, and the clothes. Why I hang onto things I have stained or ripped and can't (or wont) fix, I will never understand. Got rid of those.

I'm just doing a tiny little bit everyday this summer so it doesn't get overwhelming. One day, one drawer. Or just going through the skirts, save the shirts for the next day, stuff like that.

Today was a wee bit massive though. At some point this year, my stash of yarn exceeded the space I had allowed myself to store it in (dang, I should have taken a pic of my yarn closet in the light of day for you---I will do that tomorrow and make it part of "things around my house", how 'bout that?). Anyhow, I'm not carving out more space in this house for yarn. Period. I have enough. Really, I do (although when I went through it all, I had surprisingly less sock yarn than I believed I had).

I have a bag full of yarn that I have to decide how best to part with. A de-stash bag. I frogged a few things, I rewound a couple of messed up skeins. I reorganized how the stash was sorted, and labeled the bins, as they aren't see through. It was all neatly put away by the end of the afternoon, but before the summer is out, I plan to take it all back out again, photograph it, and get it loaded up into my Ravelry account. I'd like to do that as soon as possible, like say, tomorrow....but I don't want to get so sucked into that task that I don't finish the purge of the rest of the house. I also don't want to be so busy fondling my yarn that I don't get the things done that I need to do before heading out of town.

Anyhow, my entire bedroom and master bath have been purged now, except my jewelry box. That's a breakfast in bed on a weekend sort of fun thing to do, I think. It always kinds of reminds me of sitting on the bed with my Grammy when I was little and her letting me try things on, and then her giving me a piece or two of costume jewelry.

I would have to say that the big bummer for the purging is going to be the garage. It's become the catch-all, when I can't figure where else to put stuff, and it has gotten out of control. I don't think I will be able to adequately tackle that until I come home from the tour, though. It's a friggin' mess, and is going to take a whole day of my attention.

It's feeling really good to do this in small bits, and it feels even better to do it before it's 3-5 years down the road and the job is much bigger and more overwhelming. I don't ever want to end up in that mess again.