New Yarn Storage and Organization

Recently I moved out of the house I had been in for my entire four years of college and in the past month I have been busy moving into my new place. It's a basement apartment with lots of space and a huge spare room that I instantly knew would make a great office and craft studio space.

When I first started to envision how my craft studio would look, I of course thought about how and where I would store my yarn. I had my ikea cube shelf in mind, as I had used it for yarn,as well as books and other things, in my room at my past house:

The shelf hiding behind my loft bed

Sadly, the base of my beloved shelf (literally) fell to pieces; it had suffered sump-pump failure a few times at my college house and although it seemed to be holding together fine after, once I took it apart to move it, the damage was apparent. I had thought I could fix it, but once I saw the inside was covered with black mold, it was obvious it was beyond repair.

Since the rest of the shelf is in good shape, I still wanted to find a way to use it again. My mom asked my uncle if he could build a replacement base, and he was able to. I was very pleased I wouldn't have to get a totally new shelf!

Putting it back together was more labor-intensive than I had imagined, as the new base isn't as thick as the old one and my mom and I needed to drill deeper holes into the other boards to get the wooden dowel pegs in deep enough to fit in the shallower base.

Now that it's together, I've gotten nearly all of my yarn onto in and fairly well organized as well. I was surprised at the amount of space left over, but I think the open shelves will be great for fabric storage and maybe scrapbook storage as well.

I primarily organized my yarn by fiber type, with all the acrylic yarns together (and sorted by warm, cool, and neutral colors) and my wool, cotton, and alpaca yarns all together. I also used a shelf for all my bare yarn to be dyed for my etsy store, and a shelf for all of my New Zealand yarns as well.

I'm looking forward to having a more organized stash and getting more of my crafting supplies organized on the shelf!