Here we go! Are you ready?! I’m so excited for this. Probably way more excited than I otta be.

We’re gonna re-visit some oldies but goodies this year. I received lots of ideas and suggestions from readers this season, so I’m choosing from among the most-requested ones, since those seem to be the most-needed. I can tell you that I also need these for my ownself, so I’m totally on board with these!

And remember, if this is a task you don’t need to do cos you’re already just that organized, you can go back and choose your own task from previous countdowns HERE.

For our first task, it’s a broad one, and you can interpret it however you need to for your own particular situation.

Work on the fabric/scrap organization

I  know we all have fabric that needs to be dealt with, because it’s our medium of choice for our craft. Depending on what/how much you have going on, it tends to get out of control while we’re in creating mode. At least it does for me. So . . .

• If you don’t have any scraps that need taming, you can work on getting your regular stash in order.
• If you want to make this a giant overhaul of your entire fabric collection, then by all means, jump right in.
• If you want to only tackle a certain portion of it, that’s fine, too.
• If there’s only one part of it that’s bothering you, then tackle that.

For me, it’s my loose Scraps. Well, and the fact that my bins sorted by color are still too full, and my precut drawers are getting too overpopulated, and my yardage seems to be scattered everywhere, and . . . you get the picture, I’m sure.

And I’ve been working on this all year already! What does that tell you?

I’m devising new ways to store it all, and when we finally move, I will have a new place and way to store it, BUT . . . it all has to fit in that storage area, or it’s gonna have to go. So I’m trying to whittle it down a lot more before we move, because I already know right now I still have too much.

So here are a few ideas as you work through this task:

• Decide if you want your fabric to be stored in one certain area, and whether it will all fit.

• If you have a designated area, are you willing to let the excess be stored somewhere else, or will you whittle down the stash to get it to fit?

• Gather everything up so that you can assess what you have. I did this last year, and was appalled at all the random bits and bags I had stashed everywhere. I keep thinking I’ve found them all, but they keep popping up.

• What types of fabric do you store? I have yardage, bins for pieces less than a yard, and a rolling cart with drawers for the scraps that I process into the pre-cut sizes I use. I also have a shelf for bundles and purchased pre-cuts (layer cakes, charm packs, jelly rolls, etc.). And I have a vintage fabric collection that is kept separately. Try to group all your types together to see what you’re working with; this will help you see what you might need to do differently.

• I also have a bucket for strings, a basket for odd-sized chunks, and a HUGE box of scraps still to process. If you have these, you’ll need to decide where they are going to live.

• Ask yourself if you want/need to keep it all, and what you will do with it if you don’t. You can donate it, sell it, or use it up quickly to have it out of your space.

I have lots of ideas about what I will be doing with mine, but it takes time to execute those plans. For example, I have a huge pile of quilts that need backings, so that could use up a lot of my large yardage, which will help immensely, but I can’t do it all in one day — it will take some time to do that.

I want to process up and sort that huge box of scraps, but that also takes a lot of time. I’m gonna start with this box for the challenge, and hope to have it empty very soon. Just at first glance, I know some will get thrown away, some will get bagged up and given away, and some will get used up.

I also need to get rid of more Fabrics that I know I will never use. I have gotten rid of all my batiks, novelty fabrics, kid fabrics, and holiday fabrics because I never use those types of fabrics. I still have one small pile of homespun, from which I intend to piece two quilt backings, and then I’ll get rid of the rest of that as well.

Everyone’s situation is different, so you need to decide for yourself the best way to handle it. As you work through this, be honest with yourself. If you never use novelty fabric, why are you keeping it? When you look through your stash to pull fabric for a project, but you continually skip over that one print you’re not in love with, why are you keeping it? If you don’t like green, why do you have so much green fabric? (Cos you never use green cos you don’t like it, that’s why! Time for it to go.)

So are you ready to tackle this?

Don’t worry if it seems daunting. You don’t have to completely finish this task for this challenge, unless you just want to dive in and do that. The challenge is to work on it. To make some important decisions for going forward. If you don’t know what you have, you can’t use it. This will show you what you have, and then you can come up with ideas on how you will use it, or even IF you will use it.

I’m excited to hear in the comments how you tackle this one. Good luck with your first task!