I just finished reorganizing my stash! I had previously organized it by fiber content, but realized recently that this was silly – I choose yarns based first on size, then on fiber content. Also, organizing by fiber content doesn’t work gracefully for all yarns – what do you do with the mixed fiber content yarns, or that unlabeled, heaven-only-knows-what-it-is yarn?
So I reorganized it by yarn size:
- 1 bin of yarns 20,000 ypp and finer. It is embarrassing how much 120/2 and 140/2 silk I have. Plus some beautiful ultrafine silk and metallic yarn from John Marshall, gold metallic embroidery thread, etc. Lots of etc.
- 1 bin of yarns 10,000-20,000 ypp. This is mostly 60/2 silk, but also a few pounds of 2/60 nm wool, and a little bit of 2/68 nm cashmere.
- 1 bin of yarns 6,000-10,000 ypp. Mostly 2/28 nm silk and silk/cashmere mixes, but also some wools and some “uh, I think it’s protein fiber” yarn.
- 1 bin of yarns 3,000-6,000 ypp. Rarely used, since I usually weave with 7,000 ypp and finer, but might be useful as weft for summer + winter.
- 1 bin of yarns over 3,000 ypp. (Mostly bought for knitting, but who knows…)
- 1 bin of 30/2 silk, because I have 10 kg of it! (Ordered in wholesale from India.)
- 1 bin of rayon and cotton chenille, because I have so much of it.
- 1 bin of 100% cotton, linen, and other cellulose yarns – I want to keep those separate, since they dye very differently from protein fibers, and I don’t have many of them.
- 1 bin of mixed odds’n’ends – tapestry yarns and small skeins/cones not worth indexing separately.
The end result is more yarn than a woman should have, but now neatly organized so I can find things without digging through multiple bins. Also, my yarn database is organized by yarn size, so this makes things easy to find.
How do you organize your stash?
I don’t have bins; I have shelves. And I probably don’t have as large a stash as you have. I seem to arrange by (1) fiber content, then (2) grist, and finally (3) color. For example, all of my cones of rayon chenille are together, and then they are sorted by color–warm colors on one shelf, cool colors on the next shelf. All of my cottons are together. Then they are organized by grist and color. All of the Tencels are together, and then arranged by grist and color.
I have a few silks and wools, but not many–I just don’t weave with these fibers very often.
I guess that this organizational scheme reflects the way I think about my weaving projects. The first thing I ask myself is what the fiber content will be. Then I ponder the grist of the fiber. And finally, I work on the colors.
I do also have a lot neutrals in all fiber types & grists for dyeing, but I don’t organize them together as “fibers you’ll dye.” I put them with their little friends in the overall scheme of fiber type, grist, and color (or lack thereof).
wanna fly down to Alabama and organize my 3000 cd’s???? I spent some time as a buyer at Tower, where I had the largest department (read “budget”) in the whole system for International music. I got promos by the boxload (read “bribes”) and cannot bear to throw away music, so, here they all still are!!!!