There are many different ways to store your yarn stash. Some store it by colour, some by planned project, and some just stuff it all into whatever space they have left.
Me? I like to store my yarn by yarn weight.
I didn’t always do this though. I used to store it in whatever space I could find. But over time, it grew out of control. And it became more of a burden than a privilege.
One year, back in 2014, I decided to get ALL of my yarn together in one place. It was… scary!
I randomly went through each item, keeping yarn I wanted to keep, and removing yarn I didn’t. Donating the yarn I no longer wanted to use to charity and a knitting group.
BUT I just put it all back without organising it.
Even though I had less yarn, it was still difficult to find what I wanted, and to keep track of what I already had lined up for certain projects.
I repeated this each year, with not much progress. Until 2017, when I decided to organise it all into categories. And that category was by yarn weight.
First, I had to get it all out again. I don’t have a 2017 photo, but here is 2016…
This time I decided to group my yarn into different categories. All the laceweight went into one pile. The sock/fingering weight yarn in another pile. Then double knit. And worsted/aran. And then chunky.
I immediately saw a couple of benefits of doing this, and a couple more appeared over time too. So let’s find out what these are…
Benefit #1
The first benefit of categorising the yarn by yarn weight was that instead of one giant pile of yarn to go through, I had several smaller piles of yarn.
If I were to ask you for 5 hours of your time in one solid chunk that would be quite difficult to find.
But if I were to ask you for 1 hour of your time on 5 separate occasions that is likely to be easier to achieve.
By categorising, and storing, your yarn into groups you only need to sort through a smaller amount in one sitting. Which is going to be a much more manageable task. It also means it is easier and quicker to pull it out and sort through on a regular basis.
Benefit #2
How many times have you come to make a project and realised you had allocated two different yarns to it?
When I was sorting through my laceweight yarns I realised I had bought more than one yarn for the same pattern! When you are having to remember everything it is easy to forget some things. But when you focus on only one yarn weight, and therefore a smaller range of patterns, you are more likely to remember what you have and haven’t allocated. This results in less duplication of yarn for the same pattern.
Benefit #3
Have you ever moved on to start a new project using a particular stash yarn, but then you’re not entirely sure where it is? You then proceed to look in all the places you think it might be, and go through what feels like the entire stash only to find it in the most obvious but not-obvious place!
If your stash is sorted by yarn weight, when looking for a particular yarn, you have no need to search your entire yarn stash. If you need double knit you can go to the double knit section and find what you need. There is no need to look for double knit in the aran section because you already know it won’t be there. Thus saving you time and frustration trying to find the yarn you want.
Benefit #4
How do you store all your yarn scraps and part balls?
Having a sub-category within each weight specficially where scraps and part balls can when kept together enables you to see at a glance if you have enough to make that scrap blanket, bag, etc. If that section is getting a bit big it is also a good indicator of whether your next projects would be better off using some of those or new yarn.
My Yarn Stash Now
Since storing my yarn by weight it has enabled me to maintain a much more healthy yarn stash level around the 30,000 metre mark. Granted, that is still a lot of yarn. But the yarn weight system gives me more control, makes it easier to evaluate, enables me to see what I have at a glance, plan my projects, and is no longer overwhelming to my mental health.
Do you store your stash by yarn weight too? Let me know in the comments.
Best wishes, Sam xox
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