I crochet. And like most people that crochet, I am addicted to buying yarn. Now, instead of buying new from the store all the time, I like to buy secondhand from thrift shops and Goodwill, things like that. I always have. For one, it’s cheaper. Two? It’s better for the environment if I buy what someone else has already donated. The problem ends up being that I buy way too much and, if I don’t carefully look through the bag that they’re selling, I’ll end up with stuff that I would never use.
If you haven’t listened to my most recent podcast episode or watched the video on YouTube, you might not know that I have basically taken up the mission of being way more eco-friendly and zero-waste in the name of my faith. And because, you know, it’s the right thing to do. Anyway, the first item on my list to declutter was my yarn stash! Now, we don’t live in a very big house, and it’s funky too. My room is the upstairs attic-turned-bedroom, which would be fine and dandy but the house is an a-frame house, meaning one of my bedroom walls is slanted at what seems like a 45-degree angle. So we don’t have too much space up here for extra things. Plus our ferret, Faye, likes to run off with my bags of yarn and hide them anyway so the more I destash what I don’t need or use, the better.
So I started by doing what anyone else would do. I dumped it all on my bed! You can see in the picture that there were a lot of little balls of yarn and then some bigger skeins that weren’t wrapped well. The small balls were purchased second-hand at the thrift shop. See, I like buying them that way because I get a gallon ziplock bag for no more than $2.00 and sometimes as cheap as $0.50. However, after going through and destashing all this yarn, I realized something. A lot of what was in those bags was wool, or some really fuzzy fibers, and some crochet thread. I don’t use wool because it makes my hands itch (and I’m vegan and would only use ethically sourced wool), I’ve never been a fan of fuzzy fibers for crochet, and I don’t use crochet thread. It’s too small for my hands to handle.
I went through each bag and kept the colors, weights, and styles that I would use. I separated the yarn by what I would use and what I wouldn’t, and I ended up keeping more than I thought I would.
I also got rid of quite a bit. No by “got rid of”, what I mean is donated. I’m not going to throw this all away! That would be wasteful and, not to mention, really bad for the environment. I don’t want the acrylic yarn in these bags to end up in the landfill where they will take decades to decompose.
So, I can check one destash thing off my list. What’s next? Probably my closet, but that’s going to be a video! Make sure you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel (and you click the little bell) so you get notified when I post a new video.
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