Hoarders Anonymous

Hello, my name is Sarah, and I am a craft supply hoarder.

Good gravy I don't know where I have accumulated so much stuff.  I have been going through our office/sewing room trying to condense stuff and pack stuff away to turn the room into Austin's bedroom so his current room can be the nursery for baby girl.  I have tote after tote of crafting stuff, mainly fabric.  I had four large totes stacked up in the corner of the closet and I have gone through them and sorted the stuff out and condensed down to two totes and a few random projects that need a new home. 

What was in the totes you ask?  Each had a hodgepodge of crafting stuff- scrap fabric, big pieces of fabric, batting, stuffing, old patterns and designs, yarn, ribbon, old t-shirts (saving sentimental ones for quilts), craft kits, and probably more that I am forgetting.  I sorted the fabrics into a scrap tote, and a tote of just significant pieces of useable fabric, like at least larger than a yard.  I sorted the yarn and saved about 8-9 full(ish) skeins for future use and boxed up the rest to donate to Austin's preschool.  Any projects in progress that were in those totes I have sitting out on the floor for now until I go though about 5 more medium sized totes that mainly hold other projects in progress.

I also threw out a bunch of scrap fabric.  I know, I know some people are probably gasping at the thought, but a bunch of my stash came from various fabric scrap finds at yard sales and auctions from back when I lived in Colorado and had access to those kinds of events.  Often these bags of scraps came from some older lady who was a quilter who passed on and the family tried to make a buck since none of them followed in the ladies footsteps with quilting.  Often the bag contains a few good sized pieces of fabric, but mainly scraps and quilting pieces.  Usually there is no pattern with the pieces, and there are not enough to do more than a wall hanging.  A lot of times the fabric has old style prints and some so old that you get the feeling that if you tried to sew it, it would just turn to dust.  So as I went through the scraps I got rid of anything that was too small to be realistic in another project, ugly, or pieces to some mystery pattern that I will never take the time to figure out.  I should mention that I also made a pile for the thrift store of useable pieces that maybe I didn't like, but could see being useful in the right project for someone else.