How My Stash Grew/Color

 I turned 40 in 2000.  I had finally finished my education, I had a full time job, a marriage, a house and a mortgage.  I had the money, if not the time, to stash yarn to my heart's content.  My husband blithely told me that "We won't go hungry with you buying yarn," so I had permission to buy as well.  (I chose not to tell him about the then $40 and $50 skeins I could buy, since I didn't plan to spend that kind of money on yarn anyway.)

Then I joined a not so active knitting guild and a very active crochet guild.  Several times a year, I would travel with crochet guild to various events, and we always found a yarn store to visit before we headed home.  There was always yarn to adopt at the meetings, too.  Needless to say, my stash grew by leaps and bounds.

Then the 2010s hit.  Our elderly parents suddenly needed a lot more care, which ate into the limited time I had to craft.  We lost my father-in-law in 2013, and my mom in 2016.  After my mom passed, though, I found that I had quite a bit more time on my hands, and I began to get reacquainted with my stash.  It was an eye-opening experience.  It turns out that yarn doesn't date, but color does.  I realized that I was going to need a plan, and a good eye for color, if I was finally going to put the stash to good use.

Happily, I had been playing around with color for a good few years.  In 2009, I started an afghan called "the never-ending blanket", which is basically a solid granny square that you can make any size you like.  I used yarn scraps and a color wheel to get a sense of pleasing color combinations.  It was good practice that I now apply to my larger stash as well.  Recent yarn acquisitions in more current colors have also helped.  The challenge of using up the stash remains, but it is a very happy challenge indeed.

Why We Stash Yarn

 Why do we stash yarn? My yarn friends and I ask ourselves this frequently.  Yes, it's nice to always have a project at hand without having to run to the yarn store.  But it is also true that if I want to make a present for someone, or I get an idea for a very specific project, I almost always have to buy yarn, even if I shop the stash first.

There is also potential guilt about your yarn stash to deal with.  It doesn't really matter what size stash you own.  If it makes you feel guilty not using it, or it is taking up too much space, then it is too big.

So why amass a large stash?  I truly believe it is because stashing yarn is a way of believing that there is time to make all of the projects you want to make and try all of the yarn you want to try.  The man in the Viking Cruises commercial says time is the only truly scarce commodity, and he's right.  The yarn will be there in the stores when you are ready to make the project.  But the brain will fool itself into believing that if you have the yarn, you must have the time to use it up, and so you buy more now.  And before you know it, the stash takes up an entire room in the house.  That's why it is important to curb the impulse to buy yarn if you are serious about stashing down.

Projects

 I have committed to finishing WIPs this year, so for the next 6 months my stash shrink down may go a bit slowly.  This is because the majority of my projects are afghans.  I finished one afghan last month.  I pushed to get it finished before the heat of summer sets in because I intend to enter it into the Big E Creative Arts competition in September.

The two afghans I am currently working on, as well as the one I just finished, each  involve making 20 10" squares.  Each square is a different crochet stitch pattern.  This means that between March and June of 2022, I will have made 60 10" crocheted afghan squares.  When I am done, I don't think I will want to see a crocheted square for a while.  Sadly, there are still more afghans to finish among my projects.

The two afghans I am currently working on are a great way to start shrinking the stash, however.  I am using almost all of the Caron Simply Soft Brites yarn in my stash, and I am finishing skeins.  I estimate that the afghans should use upwards of 4,000 yards of yarn, so that will be a nice boost to my stash reduction efforts.

I won't actually sew the afghans together until autumn, though, because I just don't have a spot in the house that is air conditioned enough during the summer.  But since I have two sock yarn blankets started, in addition to some other light weight projects, I will have plenty to do when it is hot and humid out.  If I can finish all the squares over the summer and sew all the afghans together in the fall, I will end the year with a much neater work space and the ability to start real stash eater projects next year.

Guidelines for Stashing Down

 My stash problem goes back quite a few years.  I know this because I joined the Great Stash Knit Down group on Ravelry in December 2007, and I have been trying to get the stash under control ever since.  Just about everything I know about stashing down comes from the members of the group who have been on this journey with me.  So here are my guidelines for stashing down, learned the hard way over the past 14 years:

1. Stop buying yarn.  Once you start concentrating on using your stash, it can be easy to fool yourself into thinking that adding to your stash is no big deal.  I did really well using stash yarn for the first two years and then wiped out all my gains with only a few ill considered purchases.  Trust me, it is a lot faster to buy yarn than it is to use it up once it is in your possession.
2. Keep away from temptation.  Avoid your LYS.  Unsubscribe from yarn store email lists.  Avoid yarn catalogs.  It is a lot easier to "cold sheep" when yarn is not in front of your face constantly.
3. Multi-stranding is brilliant.  This is something I don't do very often, but I intend to incorporate it more into my crafting life going forward.  Just remember that the thicker the yarn, the harder it is to multi-strand.  2 strands of lace weight yarn are the equivalent of fingering weight.  2 strands of worsted (size 4) yarn are the equivalent of super bulky and will make a very heavy afghan (or anything else that isn't designed for super bulky yarn).  But if you want to see yarn fly out of your stash, I can't think of a faster way to do it.
4. If the pattern and the yarn aren't playing nice together, try something else.  I am fortunate that I knit and crochet, so I can switch from one craft to the other.  I have often found that if a yarn doesn't want to be knit up, it will work very well being crocheted.  Some yarn is horrible when crocheted, but responds really well to being knitted.  I have been able to use up some difficult yarns this way.
5. Always try to finish the entire skein of yarn.  This is surprisingly harder than it sounds.  For acrylic yarn, I have a box for the ends of skeins that can be made into scrap afghans, but other types of yarn are more challenging.  However, ultimately it is far easier to keep an accurate inventory of yarn on Ravelry if you finish the whole skein.
6. If you like to read, audiobooks are your best friend.  Unfortunately, I have never gotten into audiobooks, so I can't put this one into practice right now. Maybe someday.
7. Focus on just a part of your stash at a time.  This makes the task seem much less overwhelming.  I know that I don't have a lot of sport or bulky weight yarns in my stash, so if I ever get my WIPs under control, I intend to work on those two categories first, then move on to other parts of my stash.

The Scope of the Problem - and The Challenge

I have approximately 800 skeins of yarn in my stash, totaling approximately 105 miles of yarn.  This isn't the biggest stash I have seen on Ravelry, but it is up there among the largest.  If I used a mile a month, I would get to the end of my stash in 8.75 years.  So I am not quite at SABLE (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy), but I am too close for comfort.  I am also retired.  The thing about retirement is that you are home a lot with your stuff, and it becomes much harder to ignore just how much stuff you actually have.

So my challenge to myself is this - between now and December 31, 2023, I am going to use up half my stash.  I need to about double the amount of yarn I use each month to reach this goal, which should be doable if I focus.

These numbers are all based on the stash I have listed on Ravelry.  I originally inventoried my stash and added it to Ravelry in 2008.  I have been good about adding all of the yarn I have acquired (unless it didn't have a label and I truly didn't know the yardage), but I am hoping that I have been less good about moving entries to "all used up" over the years.  I will re-inventory parts of the stash as I go, and with luck I will be able to get some numbers down without any effort on my part.

Let the challenge begin!

Welcome to the Great Yarn Stash Shrink Down!

 I love my stash, I truly do.  I love being able to start a project without a trip to the yarn store.  I love being able to find a contrast color for a hat, or a coordinating color for an afghan border.  There is an immediacy to having a large stash that can really enhance creativity.

My problem currently is that my stash is too big.  It took up the entire perimeter of the guest bedroom.  Then I acquired quite a bit of yarn last year, bought by me and acquired from my crochet guild. This caused spillage into the master bedroom, where I am also storing all of my current and hibernating projects.

So something has to be done.  I have to get the stash under control.  As a first step, I resolved in January to not acquire any yarn this year.  I have actually kept this resolution for 5 months and have even given some yarn away to crochet guild in the process.  This is a good start, but it is not enough.  I need a plan to actually shrink the stash.

I am still working out the parameters of the challenge I am about to set myself.  I just know that I am not getting any younger, and she who dies with the most stash sadly does not win.  It's time to make beautiful and useful items with yarn that has sat around unused for far too long.  Welcome to my great stash shrink down!