Spring Cleaning

I'm in the mood to get rid of stuff, to purge, to make lists and cross things off them. Starting with my stash!

I mentioned last week that I have a list of all my yarn stash on Ravelry. I printed that out and went through it, trying to make some decisions about what to keep and what to toss before even looking at the wool. It was 9 pages. Nine pages!! A bit of a daunting task. But I was really in the mood to get it done yesterday. My ideal goal is to have all of the stash fit into our upright cupboard. This will free up a lot of the storage tubs and drawers that I have it all stuffed in. I did have some definite ideas going in: after my experience with making the Fuzzy Lavender Scarf recently, I know that one or even two balls is not enough to make anything useful. So I wanted to be ruthless with those.
Any eyelash yarn - gone! I hate that stuff.

Anything black - gone! I don't have a lot of black yarn anyway, but I can't see myself making something in black for myself or anyone I know. Plus it's hard to work with because of the dark colour.
Anything that I can't think of a specific project to make with it within the space of about 10 seconds - gone!

So it was a tough brief I set myself. Soon after I got started, I realised it was going to take even longer than I thought. About 20 minutes in, my head started spinning and I needed a short break. I had the typical hoarder's voice in my head: 'But I could use it for something' and 'but it's so pretty!'. I had to keep reminding myself that I'm ruthless, that I won't regret this.

I got about two-thirds of the way through my entire stash before I could take no more and gave up for the day. I was quite proud of myself though, and I'm looking forward to finishing so I can count the number of balls in the toss-box and see how well I did.

All this motivational de-cluttering has spurred me on to more, and I've decided to embark on a Spring-Cleaning-A-Thon. I've already done a bit with my books. I used the LibraryThing to check what series I have. If I had any unread series where I didn't have book 1, I tossed the rest. I got rid of 6 that way. Some other things I've thought of are:

* Toss 10 old make-up products.
* Toss 5 jewellery items I never wear anymore.
* Toss 5 pieces of clothing I never wear anymore/I really can't be bothered repairing.
* Go through the 3 boxes of random stuff I still have from moving house, and toss, toss, toss!

I'll let you know how it goes.