The World’s Best Yarn Storage Idea

Craft & Design Yarncraft
The World’s Best Yarn Storage Idea

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When I saw the title of this blog post over on Knits for Life, I internally rolled my eyes. “The world’s best yarn storage idea? Right…”

But after I saw the images … I kind of agree! I have balls and skeins of yarn in random boxes, bags, and drawers all over my house. This yarn storage idea is great because it’s attractive and functional. Storing yarn on a pegboard has some very big plusses: you see every single color of yarn that you own, you get a piece of awesome, ever-changing wall art, and it probably absorbs echo in the room, to boot.

Since you’d probably take off the labels to store the yarn this way, you could create a catalog of your yarns by tying a piece of yarn to the label and storing them in a box.

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49 thoughts on “The World’s Best Yarn Storage Idea

  1. Little Red says:

    I think the combination of dust and moths would deter me from this… but put it inside a glass-fronted display case and I’d be all over it!

    1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

      IKEA hack in order!

      1. Captain Hook says:

        IKEA is crucial for storing my stash of 50-, 100-, and 150-gram balls of German sock yarn. I wouldn’t think of exposing it to dust, moths, pet beaks and talons/claws, cooking smells, mildew, fading, our spider housemates, and other forms of exposure wear.

        I snug up the manufacturer’s label (retaping it), then pack the balls in two-gallon ziplock bags, bought by the x-hundred at Cash and Carry. Packed with care, they line up nicely in my 15- to 30-year-old IKEA Billy units. There they are behind the doors, sorted by type, weight, and color line, easy to scan.

        Most of the cheap acrylic worsted is caked up with a yarn winder. Cakes are zipped into the boxy-format plastic pouches that my linens have come in over the past three decades, then are stored in an IKEA Pax unit that I found in their as-is room about ten years ago for a song.

        Yarn for donated garments is in regular brown boxes or in inexpensive top-zippered woven vinyl shopping bags IKEA used to sell. Sort of like the DIMPA line. They fit perfectly in the closet in the parrot’s room. Contents inventory goes on a tag on the handle, since the bags are opaque.

        Miscellaneous stuff stores in a tall IKEA Aneboda unit in the guest room. These assorted lots are packed in the square clear zippered linen bags. (If you don’t have those, try Herrschners.)

        I keep a yarnventory in NeoOffice–easy to maintain as part of bringing new yarn into the stash and removing yarn from it for use/organizing as I go, which is daily. Before any new yarn is secured, no matter how killer the deal, I must have a plan for fitting it into existing storage space. When I destash, frog out despised works in progress, or find winter projects that gardening interrupted the previous spring, things get…creative fermenty. I wouldn’t want to see all my yarn types. If I did, I’d never get anything completed.

  2. Jen P says:

    Love the idea, just hope those skeins were very loosely wound. Would hate to find my natural fibers had lost their elasticity.

    1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

      The large core on yarn winders is a good design feature: when you remove the ball, it has plenty of room to slowly unwind in on itself, relieving the tension created when winding. Combined with winding with less tension in the first place, I think your yarns should be safe. I haven’t had any problems, and I’ve been using the winder for a while now :)

  3. auraariel says:

    This look super cool! BUT in my house this is a mess waiting to happen. My cats would knock every single ball of yarn down and play with it. With the thought “I know you put all this yarn here for me! Why else would you leave it somewhere where i can see it!” Crocheting can be very hard in my house. lol

  4. Jill says:

    I have my yarn stored this way (Knits for life is my sister) and I have a 9 month old cat who would EAT ALL THE YARN if allowed. My yarn has been completely safe from her. Dust has also not been an issue (I’ve had my yarn like this for a few months now). The storage methods I used previously, even in drawers, accumulated more dust than the pegboard wall does. The only real set back is that as you use the yarn it doesn’t look as nice as it leaves gaps, but this is easily solved with a little rearranging.

    1. Ann says:

      Or…simply replace it with….wait for it……MORE YARN!!!

  5. Lady_D says:

    IMO, the dust in my home would make this a terrible idea… but, like Little Red, I’d be all over this idea if there were a way to protect my yarn from all the dust bunnies and assorted other atmospheric and natural disasters.

    1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

      LOL, “assorted other atmospheric disasters”!

  6. angela says:

    just do the same idea inside a glass or doored cabinet from ikea or a garage sale cabinet. or install sliding doors and a top shelf to the wall/alcove. the possibilities are endless with this idea.

    1. angela says:

      sorry one more. do basically the same thing with wine racks. the wine racks would keep your yarn from streaching out.

      1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

        How do you mean? They don’t stretch out on the hooks. The winding not so much either. Tell me more about this wine rack idea!

        1. angela says:

          So basically there are 2 versions that I was thinking of. There is a wine cabinet with cubby holes for your wine bottles or there is a version with a diagonal divider in it. There are several Ikea hacks for these on the Ikea Hackers site. You could add frosted doors so all you really see is this beautiful and muted pop of color. I like your idea, but I do not have tons of yarn. I have been thinking of getting an expedit unit from Ikea and making wine rack yarn storage in just part of the unit and crafts in the rest. I probably won’t have doors, but if it concerns some then it’s an idea to ponder.
          2 links to what the storage looks like:
          http://www.ikeahackers.net/2011/03/expedit-wine-rack.html
          http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/06/expedit-wine-bottle-rack.html

          1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

            Now I get it, thanks for the info! I think you’ll love either of those. Let me know when you do it. I love all the ideas coming out of this post. Makers are the craftiest people!

  7. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

    Thanks for posting my yarn wall! You’re spot-on about it’s benefits. I should have showed how I stuff the yarn labels inside the balls when I slip it off the yarn winder. They’re all there when I need them!

  8. Nancy Gill says:

    1) How (in)convenient is it to haul around a giant ball of yarn so that your projects are portable?

    2) How do you keep track of how much is on a particular ball being stored, and of how much is left after you use some for a project? With individual balls/skeins,it’s quick to calculate – do you re-measure the length on each ball after every use?

    3) You could hang your circs on the pegboard, too.

    1. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

      Woops, I replied below.

  9. Lorna at Knits for Life says:

    Nancy, good questions!
    1. Winding compacts them so it’s actually easier to carry them around.
    2. I use my kitchen scale to measure ounces or grams and just convert using the info on the label tucked inside the ball. I do this with finished objects too to know how much yardage they used.
    3. Good idea! The opportunities seem downright endless!

    1. Carol says:

      I too use my kitchen scale. I make lots of blankets for Project Linus and I know generally how much a blanket weighs when it’s finished. So I weigh the yarn that I have and can tell if I have enough to make a blanket and generally how big the finished blanket will be. I could not do without the kitchen scale. Mine will weigh up to 11 pounds. I bought it for about $15 at Costco.

  10. janiene says:

    so awesome!

  11. Elizabeth Hartsell says:

    – I’d roll up labels and store them in the center of the balls, instead of having them elsewhere.
    – I’d only put 1 skein of a batch up this way, and include a note about where the rest is stored, also rolled up in the center of the ball.
    – If you surrounded this with a 4 sided wood frame of 1 by 6 wood boards, you could then mount a thin sheet of plexiglass to the 4 sides with velcro dots. That would solve the dust, moth, and cats problem, and be easy to remove when you wanted to get to the yarn.

  12. Julie G. says:

    I love how accessible it is and how easy it is to see what you’ve got. I don’t like that it’s exposed to light, dust, moths, etc. I’d probably have some kind of curtain that I could pull in front of it for protection from the elements when I wasn’t using it.

  13. Carol Durdin says:

    I used this concept as an “artpiece” in my family room. This makes me gloriously happy.

  14. Sarah M says:

    looks like the yarn cakes have labels stuffed into the center. This only works if you don’t have wool moths, or a dusty/pollen-filled climate!

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