Decluttering, Stashbusting, Use What You've Got

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Declutter and Stashbust

We all feel the need to declutter our houses at times, and all you crafters and sewers out there, I'm sure there are plenty of you like me that have an enormous stash of fabric and 'resources' that is probably far bigger than your needs and every now and then you do a bit of  'stashbusting'.

Well, I do a lot of both decluttering and stashbusting, but I still seem to have just as much 'stuff' as I did a few years ago! 

What I have in my stash

My fabric stash consists of 5 x 55L boxes of larger pieces of fabric. That's 575L of fabric!  Sounds (and looks!) like an awful lot!!

Then there's my boxes of fabric scraps - those smaller pieces that I'm sure will be useful for plenty of little projects. All nicely colour coded and packed into 6 smaller boxes that sit under my sewing desk.

Then of course there's all the other things I keep for crafting projects. I see all kinds of cool projects on Pinterest that I think I'd like to try. I also save things that I don't want going to landfill; that seems like such a waste, when I could instead create something cool with them!

So I have lots of..

Plastic Bottle Caps.

CDs

Corks

Bread Tags and Bottle Caps

Pieces of Drainpipe

Of course endless notions for sewing - zips, buttons, clips, rings, anything that might be useful.

And then there's the clothes - always so many old clothes that I can't bear to through out or give away. Plus, a lot of my friends know that I upcycle clothes and they've started passing their old ones on to me, saying, "I thought you could make something with this"!!




Previous challenges

Back in 2011, I started my clothes upcycling with a month long challenge. I looked at the pile of old clothes I was accumulating and decided I needed to do something about them. I completed that challenge, sharing something every day in May that year that I'd upcycled. Finishing off with a stuffed fabric monster to use up the last of the scraps on the final day! One month, a large box of clothes - success!

Then last year I set myself a challenge to upcycle a HUGE pile of clothes I got from our school carnival, into things to sell at the carnival the following year. Here's what I started with.

I spent about 9 months sewing and creating. I had lots of fun, produced plenty of new sewing tutorials and in the end had a whole stall full of upcycled things to sell.

You can read about how that all went here if you're interested.

So I thought that I've done it before with a big challenge to 'use things up', why not try doing the same with my enormous stash of fabric and crafting resources?




Where did the stuff come from?

My fabric stash has largely come from charity shops, remnant boxes and a large chunk from a lovely old lady I used to know from when I had a market stall at the local shopping centre. She also had a market stall where she sold kids clothes that she sewed.  She quickly learned that I used up fabric scraps, so used to bring bags of hers to the markets and pass them on to me.
A few years ago, she moved away from Cairns to live in a retirement village further south near where her children live.  When she was preparing to leave, she was clearing her house out, and had a very impressive fabric stash to get rid of.
She showed me through her house - all the cupboards and drawers were crammed with fabric. She told me that when her husband died, she just filled up his sides of the cupboards with fabric!
I left her house with a whole car full of all kinds of fabric - and sewing and crafting books too!




I was thinking about this lady, my stash and my constant feeling just now that we have 'too much stuff'.  
What am I saving it all for?  It's not as if I'm looking forward to my retirement where I can sit and craft and use everything then.  When our girls grow up and leave home, we want to travel, go and explore, do, see and live an active and exciting life! Crafting and sewing is more what I'm doing at this stage of my life - with my kids at home to share that and learn things with me too.



Too much stuff

I like the idea of having a clear house, with lots of space and not so much 'stuff'.   

I thought lots about this when my parents visited us recently from the UK.  My parents always want to help us out where they can, and kept asking if they could buy us things - just small things and gadgets that they thought might make our lives easier - gadgets for the kitchen, new mugs to replace the ones we have that are chipped, new  things to replace those that are getting old and less efficient.

I felt a little ungrateful turning these offers down, but I just don't want or need more 'stuff' in our house.  I'm working on slowly decluttering and getting rid of things, the last thing I need is people working against me filling our house up with more stuff!! I have two kids to do that!!




Use what you've got

So that leaves me with my fabric and crafting stash and what to do with it.  I don't want to through it away - too wasteful and damaging for the environment.
Neither do I want to give it away for it to just sit in someone else's cupboard for years.  
So I've decided to use what I've got!  To make all these cool things I've saved oddments for, try out new crafts. Sew more things for us, for family, for friends or to sell or give away.

The size of my stash makes it quite overwhelming to set a time limit on it just yet, so I'll start with just using something up every week - and I will post about it to keep me accountable.

Maybe you have things stashed away too for projects that you've wanted to try for a long time but never gotten around to it!
Then why not join in in some SERIOUS STASHBUSTING!

Use what you've got 

and finally get 

A Round Tuit!!  


Do you think it's too large a goal to use up my stash completely?
Am I crazy?
Would you attempt to use up your entire stash?
I'd love to hear your thoughts - and if anyone is inspired to do any stashbusting of their own, no matter how small!