Can Knitting and Minimalism Coexist?

My current knitting project.  

At the snail pace of a dozen rows knit a week this poncho will take me all year to complete.

I'm having a crafting crisis of sorts.  After scaling back on my hobbies once, then twice I am left with knitting as my sole craft of choice.  Knitting has been my passion for the past eight years often taking up a good chunk of each day until this year that is.  This year my knitting has ground to an unexpected halt.   What's been different?  Well, this is the year I decided to not just downsize, but to embrace minimalism as a lifestyle.  Currently, I'm only on the journey to becoming a minimalist by going through my belongings, doing lots of reading about Minimalism, getting some direction and goals lined up.  In most areas of my life this journey has been an improvement to our lives, but in my hobby of knitting it has really got me stuck.  

Now, there are some aspects of knitting that run a bit contrary to how I see Minimalism working for our family.  The most obvious one is the knitter's stash of yarn.  Knitter's are drawn to yarn like moths to a flame.  We joke about yarn having fumes that mess with our minds as we leave the yarn shop with enough yarn for a sweater , scarf and hat when we only went in for a darning needle.  Yarn has very compelling qualities:  it can be all different textures, fibers, thickness, colors the possibilities are really endless.  And that my friends is what we get stuck on "the possibilities" the dream of what amazing items this yarn could become.  Of course, that's not a bad thing in and of itself but here's the hiccup, you can buy yarn a whole lot faster than you can knit it.  Which brings us to why the knitter has a stash of yarn.  We purchase the yarn with every intention of knitting it up into a wearable item, but knitting is a slow process even for a very fast knitter it takes weeks to finish a sweater.  So, often we will start dreaming of the next project, before being finished with the one we are currently knitting.  The planning process is lots of fun; looking up patterns, figuring out what yarn to use etc.  But why the yarn skeins pile up is that we are fickle and the yarn that we purchased while we were in the middle of knitting endless rows of plain stockinette stitch doesn't still interest us after completing our project.  We want something even newer, so the yarn balls pile up unused building themselves into a proper stash.  

This shopping for yarn, patterns, accessories and tools has become quite epic in scale.  All knitting education events and retreats have shopping, there are clubs that deliver yarn monthly to your house, there are indie dyers that have much built up "shop updates" that if you don't get that yarn now it will be gone forever.  There's pressure to purchase from all these sources and then your knitter friends who enable you to purchase more which I believe makes them feel better about their own purchases.  It's really crazy making.  I know they are out there but I have yet to meet a knitter who buys yarn for a project, knits it to completion and only then buys yarn for her next project.  This is the type of knitter I aspire to be, but right now I'm still the knitter with the stash and lots of half finished projects. 

I've gone through my stash and have sold off lots of yarn.  I kept only that which is currently in a partially knitted project, colors that will go with my now reduced wardrobe (I bought a lot of yarn over the years just because it was "pretty" not that it matched anything I owned) or that is earmarked for a gift.  But, this still leaves me with quite a bit and I don't know how I feel about it.  On the one hand I don't need to purchase any yarn for a couple of years, but then on the other hand I need to store all that yarn for a couple of years.  Will I even still like it by the time I'm ready to knit it?  It's not a dire situation, but it does weigh upon me. 

The next aspect of knitting that I feel is a bit contrary to minimalism is that it makes more stuff.  If I make a sweater I will have another sweater, unless I get rid of a sweater.  Simplistic explanation, but when you're trying to downside your belongings it's hard to consciously make more belongings for yourself to manage.  Now, I get around this by making gifts for others, but even my mom has told me she doesn't need more sweaters.  Then there's making items for charity; hats for cancer patients, warm clothing for the impoverished living in cold climates, socks for the homeless etc.  There are options, I simply don't feel drawn to any of them at this time.  Which leaves me still feeling a bit stuck.  

So, can knitting coexist with minimalism?  Yes, I think it can, but I don't think it's an easy path.  There is a lot of temptation to consume with this hobby at levels with which you cannot possibly keep up.  I'm not sure where this leaves me in regards to my knitting hobby, but it definitely deserves some more thought.

Where Has the Time Gone?

 

Confession time:  here are my two large bins of yarn. 

It's been just over a year now since I've visited this space.  Where has the time gone?  I'd like to say I have been a powerhouse accomplishing all my goals, but sadly this isn't so.  I lost my momentum last winter and fell off the wagon of downsizing.  While I did get rid of lots of stuff, more has crept back in.  Space is a vacuum as they say.  

But what really went wrong?  Well, I'd have to say a couple of things happened.  First, I tend to shop online in the dark months of January and February when my depression is at it's worst.  I can actually track this habit back quite a few years now and a habit it has become.  While it feels wonderful to look at pretty things and purchase them, I would almost instantly have buyer's remorse and lots of guilt, guilt, guilt upon receiving the item.  I realize that this has to stop and to stop it I need to stop going to those shopping sites.  Window shopping is just something I am terrible at as I always, and I mean always, end up buying something.  Being an introvert by nature makes online shopping a blessing and a curse as they say.  I avoid all the crowds, noise, and people, which for me is a good thing, but it also makes shopping too easy as I am able to do it in my pajamas at any time of day or night.  So, now I'm only using my computer to sell stuff, check email and stay motivated by reading/watching/listening to people talk about downsizing, tiny homes and minimalism.  No more shopping for me.

Secondly, I think I've put myself into temptation's path too often.  Now, temptation is very different for people, but for me this meant:  going to Sheep and Wool Festivals where there is lots of fibery goodness for sale (remember I knit and spin yarn), going to my local yarn shop just to "look" at what's new, going to knitting events like Yarnover or retreats where there is lots of shopping.  Now, I know I can't just isolate myself at home for the rest of my life, but I think knowing my weaknesses will help me.  Thus, this year I will only go to one knitting event that I'm taking a class at and will skip the shopping, instead of the four fiber events I went to last year.  

Something else has occurred to me this year too.  My crafting hobbies need to be downsized even more.  If we are going to live in a tiny house (yes, those ones you've seen on wheels) then spinning yarn has to go as it simply takes up too much room with a spinning wheel, multiple tools and all that fluffy fiber. This thought made me also acknowledge that my knitting hobby really needs a few tweaks to make it fit better with a minimalist lifestyle.  Instead of knitting whatever takes my fancy I really need to either make sure what I knit for myself coordinates my wardrobe, is something I'll actually use and something I need, or I need to knit for other people be it friends, family or charity organizations.  Knitting does make a product and that product has to go somewhere right?  This tweaking of my knitting has me getting back on that downsizing wagon with going through my yarn stash and culling as much as I can.  It also started me on another downsizing project which I'll tell you about next time.  Bye!

Donating to Charity

 My latest batch of items for donation.

Sometimes in my quest to rid our house of clutter I come to a point where I just don't want to deal with selling items, I want things gone and fast!  This is usually when I start bagging up items to donate to charity.  Making money from our unwanted stuff for us is pretty necessary so we can afford to fix up our current house to put it on the market, but selling can be a slow process and sometimes you just need to keep the momentum moving.  Donating can give you money though in the form of a tax deduction and it's nothing to sneeze at I assure you.  If you're diligent about recording what you donate it's pretty simple come tax time to plug in all those itemized deductions.  A single pair of women's pants can be worth anything from $4 - $12, depending on quality, come tax time.  Even if you just track your donations as a bag of clothing or household items you can still deduct something like $25 per bag on your taxes.

Donating to charities has really never been easier now that they will come right to your door and pick up from you directly, and you don't even have to be home!  The three I use most frequently are Vietnam Vets, Lupus and Courage Center, but there are many to choose from depending on where you live.  You can usually set up a pickup online or by calling to find out when they will be in your area.  If I'm really in a hurry to unload stuff, as sometimes you need to wait a few weeks for a pickup, I drive to my local Goodwill and drop off my items with them.

Lastly, another great option for donating used goods, if you are doing your clearing out during the summer months, are churches who will except donations for their annual rummage sales.  We have one in our area whose rummage sale is quite huge and they except just about anything.

Staying Motivated

Can you see our love for tubs in an effort to organize/hide all our stuff?

The tricky thing about getting rid of clutter for me is motivation.  I'll have good days where I feel I've accomplished a lot towards our goal of owning less things - numerous postings on Craig's List, bags ready and waiting for a charity pickup, closets that have been thinned out and reorganized.  But then there are those days where I look around and feel completely overwhelmed by the task at hand.  How will I ever get rid of everything in the basement?  We're planning on building our small house without a basement because of expense and because basements are great collectors of stuff.  Don't know what to do with something "Oh, just put it in the basement." you'll say until that basement becomes so full and you'll wonder what happened.  Now, I finally have to deal with all those things that got stored away down there because we didn't want to deal with them at the time.

So back to figuring out how to stay motivated.  What I do is figure out what I can do to contribute to our goal each day, but not how much I will contribute.  Meaning anything that I do to get rid of stuff is good and is enough for that day no matter how small of an action I take.  This may seem like a minor point and I didn't really get how much the distinction matters for years, but finally it clicked.  If you say "I'm going to clean out this closet today." you've set yourself a expectation of completing your task and if you don't, and let's face it stuff does happen to take you away from your task, you end up feeling disappointed in yourself.  To change it around I now say "I'm going to work on cleaning out that closet today." I've still set an expectation of cleaning out the closet but not how much I expect to get done.  See, even if I spend as little as 5 minutes working on sorting out that closet I've accomplished what I set out to do and thus feel better about myself. This distinction between what and how much is something I learned from my husband.  He would never commit to getting a project done in a certain amount of time because he knows you can't know what is going to happen along the way so why set yourself up.  Honestly, I used to find it maddening until I realized he didn't get as stressed, frustrated or worked up as I did when working on house projects and wouldn't I be better off not feeling those emotions?

I try not to take days off from downsizing either as they usually make me feel guilty and degrade my motivation.  There are days I just don't have it in me to tackle some areas of our house, but I try to find something, anything really, so that at the end of the day I can feel I contributed to our goal.  If the basement is too scary, and let's face it it often is, I'll clean out a single drawer of clothes, renew a few listings on CL, schedule a charity pickup or throwout some old paperwork or magazines in the recycling.  Nothing monumental for sure but it does keep my momentum going and it's the moving forward that really keeps me on task.  On the flip side there will be days where I'm on fire and get tons done, but I try to just be grateful for them and not set them as a standard to live up to everyday.  We'll get to our goal as they say one day at a time.