Sunday, April 13, 2008

Organize Schmorganize


In my ongoing, never-ending quest for organization, I listened to the gurus of order and serenity and decided I should go through and weed out my unloved, unused knitting and other creative endeavor magazines. Let them bless someone else, I thought bravely, diving into the pile. How many sweaters can one realistically knit in a life time, especially considering that I haven't knit one in the last two years despite having the yarn and patterns? I've managed this before - letting go of an entire collection of home decorating magazines once and gifting a two-foot pile of sewing magazines to my neighbor. No problem, I thought. I'll only keep the magazines with a pattern that I might really knit sometime in the next year or two, or maybe the next decade or two. I should have realized I was in trouble when after having gone through five magazines, I hadn't found one that had nothing I wanted to see again. They all

had a bunch of patterns I will absolutely never want to make. They had some that aren't on my list now, but who knows and they all had at least a couple that I really would like to make if I had the time and the yarn. One might say I wasted valuable knitting time pouring through old magazines. On the other hand, I was able to reacquaint myself with some projects that I had been interested in. The only problem is I still don't have any more time to get to them than I did before! I can see why people rent storage lockers - much easier than letting go. In the end, I've decided to put the magazines in my "I love it and it makes me happy," pile. While it's true, I will likely not knit more than a small percentage (if that) of the patterns in them, I enjoy seeing the possibilities and they do all contain bits and pieces of inspiration.

And here is one more argument in favor of keeping - I just found an article about knitting with boucle, including a pattern I might actually use - in a Threads Magazine from September of 1994 bought long, long before I ever dreamed I'd take up knitting. Who knows what other article might be significant to me in five years?

Are these just the arguments of delusional hoarder?

3 comments:

Lori said...

No delusional hoarding that I see... then again, I may just be saying that because I find myself in the same predicament... Could be worse. Right?

Holly Jo said...

Knitting magazines do not fall under the category of hoarding. ;) Food, yes. Clothes, yes. Magazines, no.

Janice said...

When you are in the middle of your 'knitting season' it is no time to be giving up your knitting magazines!!! (Get rid of ones that pertain to interests you had at one point....) If knitting ever gets replaced by another passion.. then you will be able to cull through the stack with more objectivity. (Aren't I using big words today?) My knitting magazines comfort me and I LOVE thumbing through them from time to time.