I work mostly in planned scrap quilts and have been working at reducing my stash. It is (the stash) fairly well organized in cardboard boxes (no problems with bugs here and they keep out the light) which are variously organized by theme or color. Everything fat quarter and larger goes into the boxes after being pre-washed, ironed, and ready to go. Saving the little bits and pieces was always hard on me but it was worse to throw them away because that's actually the size I really use. For a long time I used a hamper and just threw stuff in there but it was a horrible mess and unpleasant to actually go into there and find stuff and use it. So for the last several years as my fabric gets smaller I would cut it into strips of various sizes.
As time has gone on I decided I really don't want to keep anything smaller than 6.5" and that well yes, I do need some larger pieces of yardage I can cut down on a lot of the fabric I have by keeping by just having one WoF strip. My strips are kept in roughly color sorts, but I'm not necessarily using them that way -- for example maybe I want all florals or civil war or whatever. But they are pretty easy to handle and sort and store this way.
Recently I did a project and finally used up about 750 Y2K squares I've had sitting in my boxes for all these years along with some strips I had cut at 2.5". I realized from looking for ideas that I could spend the rest of my quilting life doing nothing but working with 2.5" squares! LOL some people might like that idea but it rather scared me and I decided then and there to get rid of all of them. So I packed them in a box and sent them away. I met a nice quilter here that does crumb quilts and happily accepts boxes of my fussy cut trimmings and smaller than 6.5" pieces. I keep a flat rate box next to my cutting area, depending on what I'm doing sometimes it fills up quickly and other times it may take a month or two.
Actual point is that life and quilting time is too short to be burdened by what we don't want -- and there is someone out there who wants whatever it is. Can be local or postage (and there are people here willing to pay for the postage), I gave away a lot of stuff through Craig's List. First to go was all the non-quilting stuff, it went to textile students at the local art college. Several bags including some UFOs and orphan blocks went to a church group who supported various groups. A bag went to the Girl Scouts. Boxes of craft stuff went to a public school art teacher, funding has been slashed and she was delighted.
And you can sell it via Craig's list as well. Last year I bought two 25 pound bundles of small pieces from a quilter's estate for I think it was $25 each, maybe it was $50. Mostly quality stuff from the early 80s. But the point is, they just took a picture of some of the box fanned out and someone bought them!
Yeah, I know, it's not much return on the investment but you don't really want them and they are taking up space that could be filled by something you want! That's called a lost opportunity cost, so really you are saving money
