If you find yourself clicking the Add to Cart button on Etsy or a dyer’s online shop more frequently than you can churn out FOs, you may have a problem.
No, not that kind of problem — there is definitely no stash shaming on Indie Untangled. But, you may have trouble finding a place to store all of your lovely acquisitions.
Living in a small one-bedroom apartment, I find this consistently challenging. A year or so after I started knitting, I decided that my stash deserved a better home than the tote bags hanging on hooks in my closet. On the advice of a knitting friend, I bought a cart with drawers similar to this one from Target. I use the two large drawers for yarn (sweater quantities on the bottom and single skeins on top, though there are some exceptions) which I store in Ziploc bags, and the two smaller ones for my folder of printed patterns, class handouts and accessories, including blocking wires and pins. (I thought I would use the wheels for dragging the cart over to the couch while I was knitting, but it’s become a permanent fixture in my bedroom.) It has served me well, though the two drawers have not been able to accommodate many more Rhinebeck and other purchases, so I’ve had to repurpose one of my deep sweater boxes from the Container Store for stash storage.
The tote bags in the closet still remain, but they’re for storing partial skeins that could still be used in a project or to help out a fellow knitter who lost a game of Yarn Chicken. I display the small scraps of yarn in a crystal vase that was a wedding present.
A while back, I reached out to some knitters I know and asked them to share their stash storage solutions. Here are some of their methods:
This is Erica’s setup. She’s chosen pretty, but inexpensive, boxes from Ikea on a shelf, with space designated for future stash (because, hey, it’s gonna happen).
Patricia has the best way to double purpose stash — hanging up some of her favorites on the wall, showing them off as the works of art that they are.
She describes the rest of her storage:
The shelf is basically made up of yarn that already has a project assigned to it. So are solo skeins from clubs but they are fingering weight yarn so they have lots of options.
The yarn hanging on the back of the door on a shoe rack is scrap balls.
The yarn hanging on the door with the mirror is on a wreath hook and that is freshly spun up yarn waiting for a decision.
The baskets/trunk is for undyed yarn and any fiber.
The tubs of yarn on the shelf are for the most part leftover skeins from sweaters or any large left over amount that can fit in the pockets on the wall.
Lastly, the stash storage I envy the most, courtesy of Lina, a photographer who lives in Brooklyn (and is making me seriously reconsider living in an apartment…).
This is why when we bought this house (almost two years ago… wow, time flies!) I made sure to let my husband know that I needed a whole room for my yarn. And since we don’t really have a ton of books anymore (yay for Kindles!) I appropriated the library as my yarn room. Got some glass doors installed so they are less than 1/4” in spacing (so moths can’t get in) and now all my yarn fits and it looks beautiful, if I do say so myself. 🙂
Share some of your functional or creative — or both — stash storage solutions in the comments and check out my stash storage board on Pinterest, which has a bunch of really cool ideas.
