Neat and tidy

Prior to this afternoon, my yarn stash has lived either in boxes and bags scattered all over the library and my side of our office, while the bulk of it was in a huge green tub that made finding anything nearly impossible. I’ve been wanting to find a way to organize it a little better, or at least put it in smaller bins so I could actually see what I have.

Last weekend while we were at CostCo (where we, among other things, bought a ruby red grapefruit tree which will eventually be planted in the backyard) I saw a set of plastic bins that looked like they might be just the thing to organize my overflowing yarn stash. The set included 10 bins in the box, all clear plastic with nice sturdy lids. I bought one set, figuring that would be enough. Ha! Anyway, here is the result.

If you bother to count, you’ll notice that there are more than 10 bins of yarn there – we ended up doing another run to CostCo to pick up another set. I am not nearly as organized as The Knitting Doctor, since I mostly tried to group yarn by either color or type (all the baby yarn in one bin, all my cottons in one bin, and so on) and didn’t worry about tracking yarns in a list for later (although that may come at some future date!). I figure what was important was to get it all into one place; I’ll worry about the rest later.

I put Azzie on the top of the stacks just to give some perspective for scale. That pile does not include the three huge cones of mystery yarn I picked up last summer at an estate sale. Plus I know there’ll be a few extra skeins left over once the afghan is done, plus there’s yet more yarn lurking in the bottom of all of my project bags. So it’s probably a good thing there are still two more bins left.

I am debating setting this as a limit – telling myself that I should not buy more yarn than can fit in all twenty of these bins. Just because there is enough space in that closet for two or three times as many lovely bins full of yarn, and just because each set of 10 bins only cost about $17 (and there were lots of them still available when we went to CostCo this afternoon), and just because I have suddenly been struck with an overwhelming urge to buy sock yarn in bulk means absolutely nothing. 20 bins. That’s plenty of yarn. I am sure of it. Grin.