Anything that had a whiff of craftiness about it, was put in the basement. After I found all craftiness-related items were put in the bottom of the house, I went to work.
Let me give a brief description of our basement. The stairs go down and if you kept walking, in about 5 feet you'd walk into the water heater and various other house-heating, floor-to-ceiling type things.
If you turned left, you'd see the set-up we did for the kids. Against the wall where the stairs run: TV and gaming consoles. Big piece of carpet underneath - rolled up futon (currently looking for a futon frame) - their toy bins - a table with all their board games - a heavy, 6 foot table that has those folding legs (Dave found it somewhere).
If you turned right, you'd see a queen-sized bed up against the wall. To the right of the bed is a small door about 4 feet off the ground that leads to the crawlspace (that thing runs under the ENTIRE rest of the house! Told Dave I was going to fill it with yarn).
Opposite the bed, is MY space!
Back to the craft stuff. And understand that when I say "craft stuff", I'm including all yarn.
I put five or six empty cardboard boxes on the bed and surrounding floor. Then I took every little box and bin that had craft stuff (not the yarn, yet...) and started sorting in to the boxes. There was a sewing box, a box for knitting accoutrement, a beading/jewelry box, a papercrafts box, a box for stuff that should be in my office, a box for glass rocks (used to make them into magnets), a box for misc..... you get the idea. Most importantly, a box for duplicates and things I want to get rid of.
I'd take all the smaller boxes and bins and and just start chucking. I didn't peruse or think too much about any of it. Pull crafty stuff out of small bin, chuck in to appropriate box.
This took me roughly a week, working at least an hour a day. Once it was all divided, I'd take each big box and further sort into smaller boxes or back in to the small bins/boxes where they would live.
Dave gave me a big bookcase (7' X 3' X 1'). It's now full of very organized boxes and bins!
Then I went to tackle the yarn....
another week of time.
I tossed the stash. Didn't dump any out, just dug through what was in the bins, looking for vermin. Nothing there - yay!
I had 4 or 5 HUGE ziploc bags of yarn that had been either taken out or never put away. I started to put it all in the bins I already had and then realized I wanted to rearrange nearly ALL of those bins in to different categories.
I have three enormous bins. One is sock yarn. The other two were marked Good Wool and Good Stuff. ?? The "good stuff" was pretty arbitrary - anything with alpaca, silk, etc. So I rearranged both those into "Non-sock fingering to Worsted" and "Aran to Bulky".
I had an "Acrylicrap" and a "Good Stuff Acrylic" bin. I kept those but took quite a lot of stuff out of the "good stuff" one and made a "Blanket" bin. I have a bin of sock yarn that's already rolled, so should be used first. I have a bin that says "Knit Me First!" for stuff I want to kick out this year. There's a Kitchen Cotton bin. There's a sadly-too-large WIP bin. There's a Felting Wool bin.
I had a bin with yarn in it for ideas I've had for my own designs over the years. Sadly, now that my skills may actually (almost?) be up to what the designs in my head need.... most of those yarns are discontinued. I'm getting rid of most of those.
BUT one of those sets of yarn is in many pieces. In Tucson, the store I used to go to let me do a store model. They gave me all the yarn for it. It was a disaster. I won't say what book it was, but out of the 24 designs in the book TWENTY had errata. We even found an error ON THE ERROR PAGE!!
It was an lovely, though odd yarn (Filatura Di Crosa Portofino). The pattern was crochet and the yarn was a really bad choice for it as it was several strings plied together and would split about every third stitch.
I eventually finished the project but not without lots of little balls of leftovers. I have about 6 or 7 balls of it left. 4 complete-with-labels and the others are all in little bits and balls. I've decided to knit it together with the plethora of black Paton's Classic Wool I have and make a huge, felted bucket (like my friend, Tina has!). The black will felt but the Portofino won't. Should be interesting!
I'll make a list of all the other things I want to make this year, later. As last year, it's a completely delusional list. As last year, much of it is the same since much of it didn't get done last year!
I've had such fun going through all my stuff! It's like an archaeological dig. Layers and layers of crafts I've been interested in over the years. Once I found knitting, all that other stuff basically got ditched. I had two medium sized bins that had cross-stitch and needlepoint stuff in them. I've got that down to one bin and the rest is going on Etsy.
As I unpack the rest of the house, I keep finding more bits and bobs of craft stuff. It's like a squirrel or a dog discovering their hidden stash here and there in the yard. The difference is that now, instead of my usual shove to the back of the closet/bin/box/whatever. I take it downstairs to the basement and either put it in the appropriate place or put it in the get-rid-of box! Such a huge step for me!
Still a long way to go, Ruth!
