I bought The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, because this post made it sound irresistible, and tonight I was seized by the urge to get started. The author instructs her readers to start with clothes, and to keep only the items that inspire a spark of joy.
There goes most of my wardrobe.
We moved downstairs in...let me think...late 2012, but I still had a bunch of clothes in the upstairs closet. I brought them all down, and as you'd expect I put >90% of them in the giveaway pile. The discards included my Up The Down Staircase T-shirt, from my high school's production of the play in 1984-1985. (I was Sadie Finch, the unpleasant secretary: "Hand in on time!") Also in the pile: the pleated-front Guess overalls I bought in 1987 with the earnings from my first job, which I guess I was saving for that future date when pleated-front overalls will reclaim their place on the runways.
I was trucking along on the downstairs clothes until the handknits stalled me out. I put an ugly cowl in the giveaway pile (ugly pattern + ugly superwash yarn = Goodwill bound, baby). I put a too-short curling scarf upstairs to frog and re-knit. And then I opened the sweater bin.
The camo cardigan does not bring me joy. Too much learning curve on display there-- the button bands are an object lesson in why one should feather in hand-dyed yarn, and the underarms are Exhibit A in the case against classic raglans, and the colors scream HAND-DYED HANDMADE NOT IN A GOOD WAY to me every time I wear it. Also, dear 2008 Jamie, you don't want to cable a busy yarn like that.
Even so, I can't bring myself to send it to Goodwill.
Maybe I could start a Ravelry thread for people who are working the life-changing magic of tidying up, in which we could re-home less-loved handknits with people who would know better than to machine-wash them. Because what does a person in the middle of a time-consuming cleanup project really need? A new source of social media distraction, that's what! And what else does a person in the middle of a time-consuming cleanup project really need? Bulky new stuff winging its way to her courtesy of strangers on the internet. Obviously.
Recent Comments