Decluttering
 

I have well over 200 crafting books/magazines in my stash and it's definitely time to declutter. The majority are quilting related but there are also several in other of my interests, such as knitting, painting.

With our cold wintry weather, it's a good day to sort through these and decide what to give away. Yet after going through 3/4's of my pile I've only found 5 that I'm willing to let go of and most of those are pamphlet sized so my pile really isn't much smaller.

Any hints on how to let go of some of this? Does anyone else hold on to things you really don't need but you think someday you will? Realistically, 99.9% of the patterns in these I will never make or use yet I can't help but to hold on because in there is the .1% of them that I will use. Most of them have things I want to make but between time and money I know I just will never get to it. And some magazines I just like to look at.

I feel your pain! I have so many magazines/books and patterns also. I always think I'm going to make that pattern next, and even start collecting fabric, then....boom....next must do comes along, new pattern or book/magazine, and the cycle starts again. My current plan was finish the quilt I'm working on, (sandwich and quilt) and start the bargello I have all the fabric ready to go for. However, new pattern came along, and I've veered off, full speed ahead, into the direction of a Rainbow Lonestar. My piles don't seem to shrink either.

I do the exact same thing, I have a notebook of the next 4-5 quilts I want to make, but then something else comes along and takes precedence. Of the 6 I was planning on making last year only 1 got done becasue other things came along.

Ugh
decluttering
sigh
remember zip drives?
I once went through all my binders and magazines, craft books and saved patterns ... everything taking up space.
I was on the road to .... what?
Anyway, I decided to just take pictures of everything I really wanted to keep and put them all on zip drives.
It took some time
but I did get through everything
I got rid of all the paper versions, and boy did I have lots of room to collect more-
of something.
Now, I have a small box of zip tapes, the zip drive, and no feasible way to access them.
sigh
But I do still have them
just in case....

I have learned, in my case at least, decluttering doesn't really fix anything.
Once again, I have dozens of binders full of patterns that I just know I will use one day.
But it gets worse.
Under-bed storage
I now collect the patterns, the fabrics and everything I will need to actually make some of my favorites.
I have them "kitted up" in individual containers.
All slipped into several under the bed boxes.
Bet I have 2 dozen kits under there just waiting for attention.

It gets worse....
I love to knit and crochet
Do you have any idea how many cute-pretty-oh wow, I love that yarns and free projects there are available online now?

The internet has ruined me!
Well
at least, it sure has required a lot of valuable space here...

while still in Colorado, i gave away a lot of books and such on Art to the Senior Center there. They taught many classes and were happy to get them. I would say libraries but the one there only took books to sell and i never could get into contact with the lady who handled that.
Here i have a contact on QOV and am looking for more for when i stop sewing. Hopefully not anytime soon.

What helped me was to go through magazines and cut out individual patterns/articles I wanted to keep. Those went into notebooks and the rest of the magazine was thrown out. Years later I realized I never looked at the notebooks and got rid of those, too.

I'm in the middle of doing the same thing, but I am having success by telling myself, "Yes, this is a really good magazine, instruction book, great piece of fabric, this color of fabric can be this or that" then I tell myself how excited someone at the local thrift store is going to be to find such treasures (I volunteer there once a week and see first hand how much joy some of these things give). Just think of them finding new, loving homes with someone who will treasure them. Only those UFOs that I know I will complete are staying. Others are put with the pattern and fabric in a plastic bag and donated. Every box that goes out of my sewing room is a joy to me. I'm in my second month of this cleansing and so far, not one thing given away has caused any remorse or dashes to the thrift store to recover it. The moratorium on bringing in anything new to the sewing room stays in effect until I am done with de-cluttering and only keeping what will serve a real purpose and not something to have "just in case".

Like SallyS, I went through all my books and took out favoured patterns with any templates, and stored in a plastic 'sleeve', which was then put into a binder with other patterns. I reduced my collection by one third this way.

As long as I have the room to store them, I see no reason to get rid of them. Same with fabric and everything else. I have a big house and lots of storage so I toss what I'm sure I won't use (cleaned out a whole cabinet of not so thrilling stuff while looking for a pattern) but I keep what I want. I can't tell you how many times I've been doing something and had just what I needed or had the information I needed because I didn't just toss things out because I'd had them a while. If you look at it and enjoy just having it, why get rid of it?