Stash Management: Part 2

In Stash Management: Part 1, I got the yarn organized into a series of Michael’s shopping bags hanging on one wall of the fibre room.
Now, it’s time to start dealing with the rest of the mess in there.
Today, The Boy had a school event in town, not too far from the Ikea store. I dropped him off and then went to the best place around here for storage gear (and cheap lunch: spinach and cheese crepes, a salad and a drink for five bucks isn’t bad, and it’s even pretty healthy).
On to the storage gear. I picked up three sets of the tall Dimpa recycling bags, two sets of the mixed size Dimpa recycling bags, and two Gorm shelving units along with a few of the little metal baskets you can hang under the shelves (since they were on for half price today).
And, as I was picking up those little baskets, I saw the most awesome thing for fibre shows: a little hand cart with a rectangular sack that fits onto it! This is perfect for Olds, when we have to walk from the motorhome to the classroom carrying gear for the day, and also for things like the alpaca shows at Northlands, where the distance from loading bay to demo area is substantial.
Now that I’m home, the first job is to actually dig out what’s in the fibre room and put it into proper storage bags/boxes and organize everything. This naturally entails making the living room into a total disaster area … and I’ve started. I hate this part.

Yes, there is a rubber snake in my fibre. Someone I know on Ravelry told a story about hearing a rustling sound in her fibre stash one night, but thinking it was the fall leaves outside, ignored it. In the morning, there was the remains of a snake on the floor under her loom … the cat had taken care of the invader. EWWW! I totally freaked at the very thought of a snake in the fibre stash. A few weeks later she sent me the minor’s head for my great wheel cushioned with spinning fibre … and a little rubber snake. I keep it in my fibre stash to remind me of that package and how much I laughed when I opened it!
The tall Dimpa sacks – which are intended for sorting your newspapers and pop bottles for recycling – are perfect for a fleece. They are about the right size for one whole fleece and because they have rigid plastic supports in the edges, they stay rectangular and upright. This will make stacking several side by side on a shelf very easy – as opposed to the crazy wrangling necessary with garbage bags of fleece, which just slip and slide and fall off each other. There’s also a convenient spot in the front to tuck a label, so you can tell what’s in it, and you can grab the bag you want and take it to your fibre prep spot, work with it, then put the bag back … super easy to deal with.
The smaller, multisized boxes are good for smaller quantities of fibre – I have a bunch of alpaca in a couple of them, and the two tall ones at the front have white mystery rovings that look suspiciously like Custom Woolen Mills products. I use them for testing out dyes and other experiments, so it’s nice to have them easy to grab.
Sorting all of this made me realize that there’s only about three of these bags that contain stuff that doesn’t belong to me (fleeces I need to process and return to their owners). This is too much for me, so I’ll be destashing a bit – some of what’s here is going to be used as barter for other things, and some I’m going to just give away to other spinners. It’s nice to have enough to share!
Next step … dealing with the shelving.