I love working on my scrap yarn blanket, but keeping the yarn I use for it organized can be a lot of work. For the first two years I had a bags full of yarn and pulled out whatever I could find. It was hard to find the yarn I was looking for and it was messy to look at. I’m on my third year of knitting a square every day, and I feel like I finally have a process for keeping things organized.

I thought I should share my tips for keeping yarn scrap organized for a project. I wish I would have had someone give my suggestions when I was first starting.

Please note that I tell myself several times a year that I’m going to put the yarn back where it came from. That doesn’t happen. I end up tossing the yarn in the bag and it becomes a tangled mess. Since I’ve implemented this process I no longer lie to myself about keeping the bag clean.

How I organized my scrap yarn blanket yarn

When the blanket is small I organize the yarn every time it is square. When I find the yarn is getting messed up more often I switch to whenever the blanket is square or rectangular. I can tell it is time to organize when I get twitchy looking at the bag. Today was one of those days.Step 1 is to dump the yarn out. By the point I organize the yarn there are several balls that are roaming freely. There are also balls that are starting to unwind. Step 2 is to ball up the yarn that is starting to unwind. This part involves getting annoyed at myself for keeping balls that might be too small to knit a square. This time I only had one ball so small I don’t know if it will knit a full square. I love the yarn though, so I’m going to chance it. 

Step 2 involves a trip down memory lane too. Here is the yarn from my first pair of socks. 

Step 2 also involves gratitude. How lucky am I to have a friend that deserves black socks? I hate knitting with black yarn. Making someone socks is a sign of true friendship, but black socks? That’s a bosom friend, and you don’t get many of those in a life.

Step 3 is taking the yarn out and organizing it by color. This is the prettiest stage.

Once the yarn is organized I fill bags with similar colors. That helps me when I’m looking for my next yarn. I usually have an idea of what color I want next, so I just grab the Ziploc bag with the right color yarn in it.Step 5 is shoving the Ziplocs into the project bag and zipping it up.

I am much happier with the project now that I have found a way to keep my yarn organized. Have you ever struggled to keep a project organized? What steps did you take to stay organized?