7 Easy Tips to Organize Your Yarn Stash

With all my time at home lately, I’ve finally had time to go through and really ORGANIZE my yarn! Organizing is definitely not my strong suit, but I’ve learned a lot through this process! I’m excited to share 7 easy tips to organize your yarn stash today.

A few weeks ago I was taking a look at my room – where my yarn is stored.

Let’s just say my yarn organization was less than ideal.

Yarn stuffed in drawers…

Under the bed…

In random organizers around the house…

Once again, not exactly a crocheter’s dream. Although I’d lived with it like this for a long time, I decided that I needed to do something to change.

What I didn’t know was the huge adventure that was in store!

7 Easy Tips to Organize Your Yarn Stash

Let’s jump right in and talk about all the different tips for organizing! I’ll also throw in some of my story along the way. 🙂

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Tip #1: Assess Your Current Storage

You can’t do anything to change your situation if you don’t assess where you’re at!

I highly recommend you start here – count all the places you have yarn stored. Is it systematic? Or does it feel haphazard?

Mine definitely felt haphazard. Take a look at my “before” picture below.

Ouch.

Yes, it’s an embarrassing picture.

But I want to show you so you know that you’re not alone. Nobody’s yarn stash is perfect!

As you can see, I definitely needed to take a step back and assess where I was at.

Tip #2: Make a list of things you’d like to do better

Once you’ve assessed where you’re at, you’ll have a better idea of what you can do to change.

I recommend writing those things down in one place so you know exactly what you’d like to change.

Now, realize here that everyone’s “changes” will look slightly different.

Maybe you do have a nice storage solution, but you’d like to make some goals for keeping it more organized.

Or maybe you’re like me, and you need a BRAND new solution.

Either way, I have a feeling there’s ways we ALL want to improve. And writing down those ways can really help!

Tip #3: Make sure you have a long-term storage solution

One thing you may want to consider when thinking about yarn storage is do you have a long term solution?

See, for a long time I never even considered this. The result was that I bought a bunch of different organizers.

I had them everywhere. In my room. A box under my desk.

But as I bought more yarn, it just became harder and harder to keep it all organized.

So, maybe it’s time to think about, is your solution long term? Or will it result in more chaos as you buy more yarn?

You may find this interesting, but my long-term storage solution actually came by accident.

Literally 2 days after I decided to organize my yarn, I found a GIANT shelving system that my neighbors were giving away.

The timing was crazy! (I give all the credit to God, haha).

Below you can see a picture of me & my boyfriend transporting the bookshelf back to my house in his truck.

Further Reading

• How to Use Up Your Yarn Stash
• Ultimate List of Stash-Busting Crochet Patterns

Now, you might not get as lucky as me and get a shelving system dropped in your lap. I get that.

But, perhaps you need to think about what will last you a long time. Maybe it’s time to put it on the priority list!

Tip #4: Just do it.

Ok, I love this tip.

It’s the most obvious yet also sometimes the hardest!

It’s so easy to let yarn storage be the least of your worries. After all, you need more time crocheting, right?

It can be easy to think that way. But in reality, having your yarn storage figured out will help your crochet life in so many ways!

Sometimes, we just have to buckle down and do it.

That’s what I did, since I’ve had so much time at home!

Within 2 days, I had primed & painted my new shelf, with the help of my family. It was great to just get it done!

Tip #5: Decide how you want to “categorize” when you organize your yarn stash

Now, this is something that was surprisingly harder than I thought.

When I went to put all my yarn on those glorious white shelves, I struggled to find the best way to really get it to look nice.

Eventually, I realized that organizing to look nice will vary depending on what yarn you have.

I have lots of different yarns – from worsted weight acrylic all the way to hand-dyed luxury yarn!

And well, putting those two categories of yarn on the same shelf just doesn’t quite look right.

There are lots of “categories” you can split your yarn into, here are a few of my favorites.

1. Organize by weight – split up fingering weight yarns, DK weight, worsted weight, etc.
2. Organize by color – put the same colors together
3. Organize by brand – put yarns of the same brand together
4. Organize by size – put yarns that are the same shape & size together (i.e large skeins, hanks, cakes, etc.)

I found that I ended up using a mixture of these 4 methods. In fact, it was nearly impossible to stick to just one!

That’s because I have a ton of different brands, weights, sizes, and colors!

How you organize will vary based on the yarn you have—so just keep experimenting till you find what works with yours!

(By the way, do you need tips for using up all that yarn you have in different categories? My free guide might be just what you need!)

Tip #6: Don’t Be Obsessed with Perfection

Ok, so some people might disagree with me on this.

But honestly, I don’t think that your yarn storage solution needs to be “perfect.”

I mean, really. I’ve seen so many pictures of what looks like “perfect” yarn storage, you know? And when I started organizing, I wanted to replicate that!

But I soon found that that was harder than I thought.

In fact, I almost started to get a little discouraged as I was organizing my yarn. Because it wasn’t as perfect as the pictures I’d seen.

But I realized—the perfect pictures we see are almost never reality. That is why I want to encourage you to do your very best – but don’t be too obsessed with perfection.

Tip #7: Organize in a way that inspires YOU to create

Ok, this is the last tip I have to share, but certainly not the least. This tip is actually one of my favorites!

Think about this for a second: WHY do you want your yarn organized? Like, besides just to have a clean house? 😉

Isn’t it so that your entire crochet life can be more organized? So you can be inspired to create more?

I know this was a huge part of it for me.

So think about, what about your yarn can inspire you to create even more?

For me, I wanted to be able to SEE all my yarn. In one place.

The giant shelf did that perfectly for me! In fact, here’s a finished picture so you can see:

Yours might look different than this, and that’s ok!

So think about it. How can your storage inspire YOU to create? I’d love to hear your thoughts! (Leave a comment below to let me know!)

Overall, I hope you enjoyed learning these 7 easy tips to organize your yarn stash!

Happy crocheting!

To view all my free crochet patterns, click HERE.