The reality is, as much as I love all of my needleworking kits, I will never make them all. I need the storage space they are currently occupying, so I need to do some purging.
Three moves in the past 8 years.
Before that, I had to help my mother dismantle her stash so she could downsize.
Is there a local senior center or Boys and Girls Club that you could donate to? I know Mom felt 1000% better when I contacted a church group that used knit fabrics to make lap robes for nursing homes. I think what hurts so much is that which we've lovingly collected is being cast aside. When I was culling through Mom's stash, she kept saying 'I got that from your aunt'. Finally, I said, 'Mom, is this supposed to become a family tradition, someone keeps this stuff til she's 80, and then passes it on to a younger relative?'
She was able to laugh about it, and accept me saying that I was not going to take anything that I couldn't imagine a use for.
Most of mine is quilting fabric, and good stuff. I figure I'll do what a lady in my quilt guild did years ago- she told her husband to contact the guild, and they'd strip down her sewing room for him when she died. I think the poor man thought that it was a bunch of kindly ladies trying to help a grieving widower...but then, he only dealt with the officers, who boxed it all up and brought it to the next meeting, and man, was there a feeding frenzy when the boxes were set out!
But his wife had known EXACTLY what she was doing when she told him to contact the guild.
