Challenge #2 - Craft Supplies

Well, I made a decision. After pondering what I truly LOVE, I have determined that while I enjoy sewing quilts and blankets and other flat projects, but I don't enjoy sewing clothing, costumes, or other items that have more than 2 dimensions. If I have time to sew, I want to spend it sewing things I enjoy. I would rather buy or borrow a Halloween costume than spend my rare spare time sewing one.

Knowing this, it's time to purge again! This time, I can sort through my sewing & craft supplies and pass on anything that doesn't fit with my LOVE.

Step 1 - The Gathering
Due to space issues, I have been storing my craft & sewing supplies in various locations throughout the house. First step is to gather them.

I found 8 file boxes of fabric & other supplies in the garage, several plastic bins in the front hall closet (on my sewing desk), and the kids' art & craft bins from their toy rotation. Also pictured here are two empty diaper boxes I brought to collect donations, as well as some garbage bags to collect garbage and some fabric donations. After I took this picture, I remembered one more file box of yarn as well as a bag of poly-fiberfill.

Step 2 - Sorting
I went through the fabric boxes pretty quickly, pulling out the fabric I knew I wasn't going to use. A lot of it was given to me, and is not my style anyway. A good portion was fabric meant for apparel, and would not be good for blankets or quilts.

The hardest thing for me to finally decide to get rid of was a box of fleece. I ended up calling my mom for support and our thought process went something like this:
-What could fleece be used for? What kind of project might I do someday that would use the fleece?
-I could use it to make soft fleece hats, or maybe puppets, but those are more 3D projects, which I have already determined I don't enjoy.
-I could use it to make soft blankets, but since it's mostly leftovers from previous projects, there aren't large pieces... it would have to be a pretty creative patchwork project, which I'd rather not deal with.
-I might be able to piece a cute baby blanket with it, but the colors I have are not really baby colors, and frankly, the colors are not my favorites anyway... they are just the colors I needed for the particular project I used them for.
-If I decide someday that I want to make a pieced fleece blanket, I will probably go out and buy more fleece in the colors that I want/need, so keeping this particular box of fleece will not help me.
-And besides, I have WAY too many projects on my list to be creating more projects just to get some use out of the fleece.
-It's time to pass the fleece on to someone who might have a need for it, or more time than I to do something with it.

After sorting through various other craft bins I ended up with a box of give aways that included ribbon scraps I didn't even like, a scrapbook calendar that I never touched (and I would prefer to scrapbook digitally), as well as a box of patterns for costumes & other things that I don't anticipate ever having the time or desire to sew.

And, of course, I ended up with a pile of garbage. I didn't empty this garbage before I started, so not all of this is from my purge, but a lot of it is. Also, in this picture you can get a glimpse of the freshly labeled craft bins on the shelves of my sewing table.

Step 3 - Organizing What's Left
I ended up keeping 4 boxes of supplies that went back to the garage. The best part of this though, was that every box followed the 80% rule, so I didn't have to tape any of them shut!

One box of "home decor" fabrics that I actually liked, and might use to make throw pillows or something (flat projects!).
One box of yarn & knitting looms.
One box of batting (remember, I like quilting)
One box of "miscellaneous" which includes fabric for some projects that I just can't get rid of, like extra material to make more matching Christmas stockings in case we have more children.

Missing from this picture are the kids' arts & crafts bins. As I was sorting through my supplies, I gave some of the unneeded items to the kids, so they can do fun projects with them.

I also reorganized the remaining craft supplies and relabeled the plastic bins they are in. On my sewing desk are two bins labeled "velcro" and "glue." The glue bin includes tacky craft glue, school glue, and my hot glue gun. Also on the desk is a bin with extra paint supplies for when the kids' art bin runs out.

Under the desk two of the stripy boxes contain quilting fabric, and the third contains patterns. There are also 5 plastic bins labeled: Sewing machine hardware, surger thread, sewing machine thread, snaps buttons zippers hooks, and ribbons and trim.

Step 4 - Putting it All Back
I can't just leave everything out in the school room, or we'd never get any school done. :) So, it's time to move the rest. This is where I put everything as I finished with it, then I put things away after I took the pictures. :)

All these boxes are empty! I love keeping file boxes because I love the uniformity of shelves full of them. So, I moved these to the garage for when I need them again.

Here's the final donations. One large black bag of fabric, one smaller white bag full of fleece, one box of random craft supplies, and one box of patterns. I let my mother go through the box of patterns before donating it, and she took a few from the box, but also added a few of her own. These donations are still sitting in my garage, but they'll be out of the house soon!

And of course, the garbage. This bag went straight to the garbage can in the garage, and of course, I put a new bag in the basket. :)

The four boxes of supplies I'm keeping went back on the shelves in the garage, and the bins that were left on my sewing desk went back into the hall closet. I'll share pictures of those locations in later posts. :)