Guest Post: Housekeeping Tips for Your Craft Room

Our Guest Post Contributor Jennifer Watts has shared with us this week, a few Housekeeping tips to keep your craft room organized. I hope you find the article useful. 

We all know the basic tips for keeping our craft rooms tidy and organised - keep your small, fiddly stitch markers in a closed box, for example, or store your yarn on bookshelves for easy access. But let’s be honest here, these tips can seem a little boring for us creative types. What we really want is to be able to tick off all those items on our housekeeping checklist, but in a more creative, more enjoyable way.

So what’s the solution? How can we keep on top of our housekeeping checklist, while still showing off a bit of our crafty personalities? Well, it’s simple! By using handcrafted products to keep our craft supplies tidy, we can successfully be organised and creative at the same time! It’s the best of both worlds!

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A good housekeeping checklist for a craft room should always include yarn storage, and hook storage. These are, after all, the items that tend to make the craft room look so messy! Here’s some great inspiration to get you started with creating your own crocheted storage solutions at home:

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●      Homemade Yarn Bowl: don’t you just hate it when you get about halfway through your skein and it starts to become floppy and just doesn’t sit right? That’s why yarn bowls are so handy but they can be costly. Instead of buying one, you can quickly and easily whip up your own, and it’s a great chance to use ‘plarn’ (plastic yarn) as it allows the skein to move around and stops it from ‘sticking’ when trying to pull the yarn through the hole. Old plastic bags work well for this.

Cut up and assemble your plarn (there’s a great tutorial here), and work in the round, creating as many rows as you like. Roughly 64 stitches around, based on a single crochet increase at each row, should be a good size, but this will vary based on your chosen hook size. Remember to skip about 4 stitches a few rows from the end for your pull-through hole. Some crocheters like to crochet their plarn around some cord or rope for a bit of extra stability and structure.

●   Crocheted Hook Wrap: Hook wrap, hook case, hook blanket, travel case … whatever you like to call it, it’s essential for keeping all your hooks organised. Even those small, fiddly 2mm hooks. Making a crocheted hook wrap may seem complicated, but if you split it into different sections, it’s actually very simple. Start by making your base – aim for 30-40 cm in length, and about 20 cm in height. SC, DC - it’s your choice. Even shell stitches and crocheted cross stitch work well!

Use HDC to add a border onto your base, if you like - it just helps keep things looking tidy. Then it’s time to move onto the hook holder. Create the insert to be the same length as your base, and again, it’s up to you whether you choose SC, DC, or even shell stitches. Just remember to skip a stitch regularly to provide a gap for your hooks. Fasten off, and sew the holder into the centre of the base. Pop your hooks into the inserts, roll the wrap up, and you’re done.

Most of us are guilty of having an untidy craft room and avoiding sticking to that housekeeping checklist, but keeping your craft room organised doesn’t have to be an ordeal. It may, dare we say it, even be fun! You’ll be surprised just how many different storage solutions you can make yourself using just some yarn, a hook, and a sewing needle - stitch marker boxes, scissor holders… anything you can imagine. 

About the author

Jennifer Watts is a freelance writer with a passion for travel, cooking, and all things creative. When not writing, she can be found exploring new destinations with her family, making toys for her daughter, or trying desperately to learn how to work up some Tunisian crochet!