If you’ve been following along with our 31 Days to Get Organized blog series, your knitting and crochet life probably looks a little more organized than it did a month ago. But many of you have found that you can put in a lot of time and effort getting organized, but it all falls apart after awhile. The last key part of any organizational system you create is maintaining the organization. Today’s task is to look back at how your craft organization has fallen apart in the past and how you will be able to carve out time to maintain your knitting and crochet organization going forward.

A couple of things to think about as you come up with your new maintenance plan…

• Find a home for new yarn, patterns, and tools as they come into your home. We all have busy lives and would rather be spending more of our time knitting and crochet. But I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to stay on top of a newly organized system is to find a place to store everything as it comes into your life. Decide where the new yarn will live. Put away patterns, magazines, and books with the rest of your collection. That means digital patterns too – move the file to the correct place on your computer where you can find it easily later. Dealing with the new items right away keeps them from piling up and getting overwhelming.
• If you like to keep track of what’s in your yarn stash, pattern library, and needle and hook inventory, enter your new items into your tracking systems before you put each item away in their new homes.
• The last part of finishing a project shouldn’t be weaving in your ends or blocking it. Document all of your hard work. Take pictures of your finished project including close up shots of details. And type up notes about your project right after finishing when it’s still fresh in your brain. What changes did you make to the pattern? How much yarn did you use? What needle or hook sizes did you use? Who did you make it for?
• Schedule tune-ups for your organizing system. Depending on how quickly yarn and patterns come in and out of your house, schedule regular tune-ups where you go through your yarn, patterns, and tools and clean them up, getting rid of the stuff you no longer want, and re-organizing if necessary. This may need to be a monthly, seasonal, or yearly task for you. I find that if I put these tune-ups on my calendar, they’re more likely to get done.
• I also like to make a list of priority projects that I want to knit and crochet. This includes making gifts for birthdays, holidays, new babies, etc. I’ll take a look at my calendar and schedule them throughout the year so I can stay on top of these time-sensitive projects. Writing down all of these projects also helps me look at if my expectations for what I want to do are actually realistic. Often I want to make a lot more things than I really have time to do.
• If you’re having a hard time fitting in enough knitting and crochet time, think about how you can use the wasted bits of time during a week. You can find that knitting and crocheting on the go may add up to a lot of time by the end of the week. Also, if you have some projects coming up that you need to finish, think about scheduling a knitting and crochet vacation for yourself. Carve out an afternoon or a weekend at home (or away) where you can focus your time on your project.

Do you find it difficult to keep up your knitting and crochet organization once it’s in place? How do you fit in all of the knitting and crochet time you want?

– Dena