November 29, 2014
I decided that the amount of material I have stashed away has become embarrassing - even to me. I likened myself to a women with over 100 pairs of shoes but wearing only a few. Worse yet, I was reminded that when my grandmother passed away, she had clothes still in the shopping bags with price tags on them. Yikes! It was time to Slash the Stash!
Mission
I quickly established a strategy identifying the problem areas and adopting resolutions. I have four distinct battle grounds:
- Scraps
- Uncut Material
- UFO's
- Storage
Scrap Control
The first thing I did was go through all my material pulling out all the pieces 1/2 yard or less. I then cut fat quarters and either:
- threw the rest in the garbage
- put it in my Farmers Wife project stash, or
- made coasters out of it
Uncut Material
As I went through the copious amounts of material I marveled at what could possibly have made me buy some of it. I must have been possessed. Yuk! No problem. If I didn't like the material any more, I just cut it up into fat quarters.
On the other hand, some of the material was just as wonderful as the day I bought it. It was like going shopping all over again and I found myself getting newly inspired. I had to control myself and just group the sets together and put them away for now.
UFO's
Why do unfinished objects happen? As I came across each one, I tried to figure out why I didn't complete them. Some I simply didn't like. Some I put away when I went on vacation and completely forgot about. Others, just got lost in the shuffle for no apparent reason.
I made the decision to finish the UFO's I like and discard the ones I don't. This process obviously is going to take more time than simply sorting material but I have to stick to my resolve. Some of the projects went to the trash surprisingly easy. I didn't like them before and I don't like them now. I put the projects I want to finish in individual containers with all the matching material and labeled them. That was easy.
Storage
I went to Michaels and bought several project containers and a couple more rolling storage units for ongoing projects and longarm supplies. Once I cut and stored the fat quarters, stored the material in sets, trashed the projects that I didn't want, and stored the UFO's to finish, there was considerably more space in the cupboard and drawers.
Stash Slash Completed
Now all I have to do is finish my UFO's before starting new projects which is probably going to be more difficult than hoped. I'm already registered in some more classes.
Bring it on!
No comments:
Post a Comment