I am not an inherently neat person and I am "housework challenged." Most of my efforts to instill organization and order are fiercely attacked by entropy the moment they’re completed. But another reason for this summer’s pathetic showing of FOs is that, despite my dismal track record in organizing and cleaning, I have finally gone on a major dejunking spree. My son is assisting me, and making it harder for me to hang on to things that I haven’t used for 20 or 30 years. Among the benefits is that I will reclaim my spare bedroom for a sewing and knitting room. I’m hoping that this time, if I really do things right, the room will be exactly as I want it and require minimal efforts to keep everything orderly. Is this a pipedream? I hope not.
In the process of working in the spare bedroom, I’ve moved most of my yarn and fabric stash out of the room (along with old toys—especially Legos—that we’ll be putting up for sale on eBay). The yarn stash looks like this:
And this:
This smaller ancillary location includes yarns that I’m knitting now or expect to knit soon and just a part of my knitting library that is necessary for my current projects. It also has my audiobook setup. I got the shelf at Target for $16, just as a way to keep those things available while the other sorting and organizing goes on—although as soon as I get my fall projects underway these shelves will be rearranged. There are, in fact, yet other shelves that have the rest of my knitting books and my magazine collection (VKs, for example, going back to the late 70s when they were republished, IKs from the early 90s until now, old Rowan magazines—you get the picture).
The fabric collection consists primarily of this:
Although I have a shelf of mostly blouse fabric that is too high to reach easily (and hence the mess),
a couple of other tubs of fabric still to be sorted, and a suitcase with yet more fabric. Lest you think I am a packrat of the order of the Colliers, please realize that I inherited much of the fabric and some yarn from my mother. She had an entire walk-in closet with fabric, and much of that is in the Rubbermaid tubs.
But she also collected an unbelievable array of notions. We both did a lot of hand sewing with silk thread and topstitching with silk buttonhole twist, and I generally bought mine specifically for a project in progress and had only a few colors. In the last couple of weeks, I finally got to sort her boxes of threads and other notions, and this is just the silk thread collection:
So you can see that I still have a lot of work cut out for me. The first step will be to clear out a lot of things, such as the toys and duplicates (I have two sets of the Time-Life Sewing series, two sets of the original Threads magazines with knitting articles, some doubles of knitting magazines), extra fabric and some yarn that I don’t plan to knit.
Another reason I planned to do at least some work in the spare room is that I needed my sewing machine for steeking. Here I had a really unpleasant surprise. My mother had the same model Pfaff that I did (both bought around 1972). Mine broke a short while ago, and when I tried my mother’s it broke in exactly the same way. When I stepped on the foot that controls the power, the wheel that makes the needle go up and down exploded and all the internal “guts” shot out.
I had my machine repaired some years ago, and the cost of a repair would be around half the cost of a new machine. It also never did do good buttonholes. So now I’ve embarked on a quest to replace the machine. When the room is set up, I expect to go back to sewing. It will be great to have a single place for all my knitting yarns and supplies, too. But I seriously doubt if I will be able to fit in a spinning wheel no matter how creative I am as a reorganizer.
