Stash Management

Something I have struggled with over time that I think is common to many crafters is stash management. Once your crafting supplies exceeds a certain amount, you kind of need a way to organize them and know how to get to what you have.

For a long time I used Ravelry’s stash feature. It is a pretty handy tool. You can reference your stash when you are looking at patterns, so you can see what you already have that would work. Ravelry’s yarn database is pretty good as well, so by entering your stash, you have all the info on that yarn. And you can sort and filter several different ways. Nifty!

However, I’m not entirely comfortable keeping all the documentation somewhere I don’t really have any control over, so I decided to figure something out for myself. I tried a couple of different things, but settled on a spreadsheet. The way I have it organized now, I have different tabs for kits, miniskeins, and just regular skeins.

While it’s not quite as nifty as Ravelry’s stash function, it can be searched and sorted, and is pretty easy to keep up to date. I do miss having the pictures, but otherwise it does pretty well.

Do you track your craft supplies? If so, how do you do it?