Week 1 of decluttering: The sewing/craft stash

I've been inspired by the lovely Yvette over at Ramblings after reading of her recent decluttering efforts. So I have decided to embark on my own decluttering efforts. We have quite a small house (and not much storage space!) so things always pile up and make the house look messy. In a bid to get rid of these problems areas I have decided to tackle one decluttering project a week. I am due to have a baby in 12 weeks so I have decided not to do a whole year of decluttering but to just do one thing a week until the baby comes. Usually I get all motivated to declutter and then try to do everything at once and end up losing my motivation. So I'm hoping by keeping it to one project a week I don't lose that motivation!!

My first project has been to sort out my sewing/craft stash. My sewing/craft items to date have been stored in various places: in a wooden chest in our cupboard, a chest of plastic drawers in our room, the empty cot (oops...) None of the stuff was stored in any particular order. I tend to just throw things somewhere when I've finished a sewing project too so it was a HUGE mess. I wish I'd taken photos beforehand and when I was sorting it out so you could see what I mean! I literally had a mountain of material to sort through!

I bought some big underbed storage tubs and sorted all my sewing/craft stuff into these tubs. I threw out scraps of material that were too small to do anything with and other odd and ends that weren't useful. I weeded out material I didn't like or didn't think I'd use, as well as other things that I had doubles of and put them in a bag for the op shop. I made some great discoveries as well - I discovered I had lots of nappy making supplies left over from my last (disastrous) attempt to make nappies. I'm a more experienced sewer now though so hoping to use some of these supplies to make nappies for this baby ;)

Everything was sorted into four tubs. Tub #1 includes: nappy making supplies and other odd bits of material that are still useful. Tub #2 includes: all my good material.

The first two tubs are sorted: nappy making supplies/other odd bits of material and all my good material

Tub #3 includes all my felt (I make lots of stuff with felt!) and thread. Tub #4 includes miscellaneous craft bits: my laminating/book binding things, beading things and some paint.

The second two tubs are sorted: felt/thread and other craft supplies

When I'd put everything into these tubs I was then able to sort all my other sewing odds and ends into these (now empty) plastic drawers. Most of these things were being stored in the cot! I now have drawers for all my patterns and books, ribbons/elastic/buttons/threads and even my unfinished sewing work.

Nicely organised sewing supplies now in the drawers!

The plastic drawers can now be stored in our cupboard and the wooden chest that I was using to store sewing stuff in has been moved to Esme's room where it is a storage container for her (many!) stuffed toys.

I'm very excited about my future decluttering projects (actually I've already done next week's one but you'll have to wait until next Sunday to find out what that is!)