Tag Archives: fabric

The Lure of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal Tagged , , , ,

I’m gonna guess I’m not the only one who struggled with Black Friday this year, but it’s a first for me.

Since I avoid crowds, I was never one to go out on Black Friday, back when crowds stormed stores starting at midnight. I much prefer to sleep at night. Over time, it’s become our habit to buy most of our Christmas gifts online.

But this year, I kept finding things I wanted for me. I was inundated with sale-announcing emails, and I actually looked at all of them, and I even left tabs open on my browser all weekend with things I was thinking about buying.

That’s not like me. And all of a sudden on Cyber Monday I thought, “What are you doing??” And I closed every tab without buying a single thing.

I don’t need anything. I already have more fabric than I can use in a lifetime. I have more clothes than I need, especially given my hermit tendencies. But that’s the logical side of my brain talking. The other side was completely sucked in by all those Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, at least for a few days.

I guess that shows that even someone who’s very committed to keeping down the clutter can fall prey to a good copywriter….or dozens of them!

A Stash Like No Other

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

I read a lot of sewing blogs, and one thing I’ve noticed is that during the lockdown, sewists have been working hard to reduce their fabric stashes.

A fabric stash isn’t like an overstock of mugs in your cupboard or too many towels in your linen closet. Those things are easy to get rid of and easily replaced. Fabric is not as easy to replace, and it costs a lot more money to do so.

Sewists who primarily sew clothes usually have pieces of 2-6 yards in their fabric stash. With quality fabric now costing as much as $15-25 a yard, we’re talking quite an investment. So it’s in a sewist’s best interest to make something from their stash rather than let it just sit there and rot (many fabrics fade and even rot over time).

Some sewists keep a running total of how many yards they’ve bought and how many they’ve used each year. This year the total bought is usually lower because many fabric merchants have been shut down or slowed down by the Covid lockdown. So some sewists’ outgo has exceeded purchases by quite a bit. In fact, many are using up 10-20 yards a month. Thus they are steadily reducing their fabric stashes and regaining space in the process.

Food, supply and fabric stashes are probably the only ones I encourage. Everything else should be reduced down to just what you need if you want to enjoy having an uncluttered home.

My Decluttering Weak Area

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged ,

I’ve done really well at keeping the clutter from coming back since our big downsizing, except for one area: my sewing habit.

I actually have two designated sewing spots in my house: one upstairs and one downstairs. I’m beginning to realize that amount of stuff in each area is expanding. I just don’t seem to be able to pass up great deals on fabric, buttons, zippers, etc. when I go to garage sales, estate sales, and destashing sales (where quilters sell fabric from their stash that they don’t need anymore.)

Not that any of these things take up a lot of room on their own, but collectively, well……let’s just say my plastic storage boxes are full up and I find myself thinking about buying more of them. But I won’t let myself go there. I’m going to have to do some destashing of my own and reduce the amount of stuff I’m hanging on to in hopes of using it for future projects.

The challenge for people who sew is that we love fabric and sewing supplies, and can easily think of many different ways to use these things. We just don’t have enough time. Or, as I saw recently on Pinterest: “I have so much fabric because I shop a lot faster than I can sew.”