It was a rainy Saturday, and my younger granddaughter was spending the afternoon with me. Around two o’clock, she looked up and asked, “Grandma, can we make something?”
Of course we could. I have more craft supplies than anyone I know.
So we went to the closet in the spare room. I pulled down one bin, then another, then a third. There was fabric, yarn, glue sticks, stamps, a bag of buttons, and stacks of paper from my scrapbooking days.
What I could not find was a pair of scissors.
We looked for twenty minutes (she was very patient). In the end, we sat at the kitchen table with a roll of tape, an old cereal box, and the kitchen scissors. We made a little house for her stuffed bunny, and she loved it.
But I kept thinking about that closet.
I had a whole closet full of things for making things. And when someone I love wanted to make something with me, none of it helped. It was all in the way.
That was the day I decided to declutter my craft supplies. It took me a few weeks, a little at a time. I want to share how I did it, because I know I’m not the only one with a closet like that.
The Crafts I Do, the Crafts I Did, and the Crafts I Meant To
When I finally looked through every bin, I noticed something. My craft supplies were not one big pile. They were three different piles mixed together.
The first pile was for the crafts I still do.
I still sew a little. I hem pants, fix a seam, and sew on a button when one pops off. Those supplies get used.
The second pile was for crafts I used to love.
When my kids were small, I sewed their Halloween costumes every fall. I also made scrapbooks of their school years, with stickers and fancy paper and little cut-out letters. (I was very serious about those scrapbooks.)