Recently Lee and I spoke about the problem with my ever growing mount craft supply. Not only is it a hazard but like a volcano has oozed depositing supplies like lava in the hallway and bedroom. Well, it isn't really that bad but it is in desperate need of organizing. While cataloging DMC floss I became worried that I had become a hoarder. After learning more about hoarding I am glad to say that I freely share my stuff and do not collect supplies just to possess them. The truth is that I need to stop buying craft supplies at least until I have put away the current supplies.
Curbing my buying was harder then I thought it would be. I spent 60 days without buying anything but physical necessities and even stopped buying food treats. During the two months I tried to put things into a new perspective of what I needed as compared to what I wanted. We saved a little money during this experiment but at the end of it I went to the quilt store and spent money. The quilt store is going out of business and so I bought fabric for my yo-yo quilt project and then on impulse I bought a jellyroll. The discount at the quilt store was great and I have a book on jellyroll quilts that I bought at a 90% off sale several years ago. So I am now trying to learn all I can about quilting. So not only did I spend money on crafts, worse I spent money on a new craft. So I brought home a jellyroll and three yards of purple fabric to add to mount craft.
I have become tired of not finding supplies I know are somewhere in the craft area, and I refuse to buy stuff I already have! So for the last couple of months I have been moving stuff out of the craft room to sort and then finding a permanent place for all of it. The supplies would have been all sorted except that I decided to catalog all of it!
Memory fading comes to us all and I thought that a file that logged what supplies I have might help keep me from acquiring duplicates. This really sounded like a good idea at the time. But best intentions don't always work.
So I started a notepad list and started logging my embroidery supplies and fibers. When I took up needle painting I bought lots of DMC floss, and had a handwritten list that I updated as I purchased more floss. When I type in the list it took a bit of time because I collected over 320 different colors and many duplicates of favorite colors. Then I type in the many different Brazilian threads I have collected. I finally got to cataloging the even weave fabrics. I measured each piece and the gauge and put them in the list. Measuring the fabric was useful, Now I can look at a pattern and the list and see if I have the fabrics I need for any project. Then I lost the file!
So while I tried to remember the name of the file and search for it on my computer I started to catalog my books. I have had an account with www.librarything.com for years. So I went to librarything and started cataloging books on their service. I already had around 150 already entered so I figured another 200 books and I would be finished. Whether to add the pamphlets and magazines to librarything was still to be decided. At this point looking at the the 7 book shelves that made up my crafting library I estimated 350 books and around 200 magazines. In fact I have told friends that I had a large collection of around 350 crafting books. Most people would look at me and think I was exaggerating. So I thought that now I would prove to myself and others that I really loved books! So over the next few days I hunted down books that were all over the house some in stacks because they didn't have shelf room designated for them yet. As the number of books entered at Librarything kept going up I started to see a problem. My calculation of the number of books was seriously under estimated. When I finished adding all but a few stragglers the book count was over 600 books! Not counting magazines and crochet pattern books! To say I was astonished was putting it mildly. I immediately put myself on a book diet and found shelf room for most of the books. This process is still in progress and I've done well not buying books. Except I did buy "Festive Elizabethan Creations" by Shirley Holdaway. Perhaps I will do another chair next year but with patterns from the book.
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