So my stash has been getting bigger and bigger. Stashes do that. It used to all fit into this one closet, the yarn closet, but then it started to creep out. Before long I had yarn in baskets and bowls and in the clothes closet and the book cases. Then there was yarn in my pantry. I was okay with that. I had yarn in my kitchen cupboards and I knew that was not the way most people lived but I didn’t worry about that.

But then I had yarn that lived on my dresser and under my bathroom sink. Then it lived in bags in the corners on the floor. Then I was walking around the bags on the floor. And then it started to bug me.

(This is just the yarn stash. There is also fiber stash but I’m not going to go into that because if I think about the stash as a whole I get a bit anxious that I have really let this yarn-n-fiber obsession get out of hand. So we just won’t talk about the fiber stash and the yarn stash in the same post. Problem solved.)

The yarn closet was pretty sad affair. Pinterest would be APPALLED at my yarn closet because its was just a pile of bins, boxes and bags.

I needed shelves. I needed one of those expensive, professionally designed closet organization systems from The Container Store. Or I needed a mom who lived next to a Sheriff who had hundreds of milk-crates he wanted to get rid of. Yep, that poor fellow is cleaning out an old home which, for some inexplicable reason, came with hundreds of old milk crates in it. The harried sheriff empties out milk crates and stacks them up outside where he hopes someone steal them but no one ever does because (a) he is the sheriff and (b) its a very small town with no college students.

So my request for 6 milk crates was met with a “Oh, yes, please, take 6 dozen.” Well, I can’t fit six dozen in my truck but I did take my six and stack them up in my yarn closet.

Then I stepped back and made way for Household Safety Feline Inspector Number One.

And Household Safety Feline Inspector Number Two.

And then I started organizing my yarn.

Pinterst… is probably still appalled because its not pretty or vintage-chik or white-on-white with accents of dayglow orange but I’m might happy with the new yarn closet. I’m not going to tell any outrageous lies like “now all the yarn fits in this closet”. It does not. There is still plenty in baskets and bowls and in my clothes closet. But the yarn is up off the floors and out of the kitchen cupboards and off my dresser. I’m not having to walk around the stash like some poor soul in an episode of Hording Buried Alive. And I can open up this closet to check my stash to reassure myself that I have plenty of yarn and am in no danger of running out.

But now that the yarn isn’t freaking everywhere, I kind of, sort of, feel like going to the yarn store to buy more.