Organizing Knitting Patterns and FlyLady

I do hope that everyone is having a Happy New Year, thus far! I am back from silence on the blog after being busy with the holidays. The decluttering efforts are continuing into the New Year. One of the areas that I have been tackling has been the office/sunroom where all of my knitting supplies, past classroom files and recipes seem to have come to roost. Last summer, I decided to go through all of my old issues of Interweave Knits, which I have happily unsubscribed to as the quality of patterns has taken a nosedive in the last few years, and any other knitting magazines that I had on the bookshelf. I ripped, copied and piled all of the patterns that I wanted to keep and set about putting them into the plastic sleeves that can protect them from wear and tear while I use them, categorizing them by style of project (hats, gloves, kids’ wear, etc.) and putting them in alphabetical order and into binders. It was liberating to get it all condensed and filed. It went from looking like this:

Knitting patterns and recipes (only half of what I actually had!)

To this:

10 categories went into 2 binders and they now reside nicely on my bookshelf. My next step is to take a look on Ravelry and see if I can log these in, so that when I search for a pattern to use up my stash, then what I have in my library will pop up. I think it entails me seeing which issues of Interweave I did rip from and then logging those magazines in, but I am not sure about individual patterns that I have purchased.

Doing this decluttering was a great step with the FlyLady program too. I am trying to get back to that after falling off the wagon in the second half of 2011. I am trying to keep the sink empty, we keep going through our stuff and simplifying and I am now trying to do the 15 minute clean up in the assigned zone of the week. This will help me to not feel totally overwhelmed by the housekeeping. Anyone else following FlyLady? How has it gone for you? My next paper declutter area to tackle is the recipes and get them filed and actually start using them. Wish me luck!