Choosing Shelving for Yarn and Fibre Storage

Why Storage Deserves More Thought Than It Gets

Most of us start with a single basket beside the sofa. A year later there is a box under the bed, a bag in the wardrobe and a suspicious bulge behind the armchair. Once a stash reaches a few kilos of wool, the way you store it begins to matter a great deal. Fibre is not inert. It responds to light, dust, damp and the occasional hungry insect, and a poorly stored skein can be weakened or ruined long before you cast on.

Good shelving does three jobs at once. It keeps skeins visible so you actually use them, it protects them from the things that degrade them, and it turns planning a project into a pleasure rather than an archaeological dig through unidentified bags.

Open Shelves: The Case for Seeing Everything

Open shelving suits hand weavers and knitters particularly well, because a great deal of the pleasure of a stash is visual. Colour and texture are working tools, and you cannot plan a warp or a colourway from the contents of an opaque plastic crate. Being able to see every cone, skein and bobbin at a glance is genuinely useful, and it also stops you buying a fourth skein in exactly the shade you already own twice.

A few practical specifications are worth bearing in mind:

• Depth: around 30cm is the sweet spot. Deeper shelves swallow skeins at the back; shallower ones let 500g cones overhang.
• Spacing: allow 33–38cm between shelves so that tall cones and stacked 100g skeins fit comfortably without cramping.
• Material: 18mm solid pine, birch ply or oak will carry real weight without bowing. Thin MDF shelves sag visibly under a row of aran-weight skeins.
• Fixing: screw brackets into studs or use proper masonry plugs. A shelf of wool is far heavier than it looks.
• Position: keep shelves off south-facing walls and away from radiators. Direct sun fades dye, especially on hand-dyed and plant-dyed yarns.

Baskets, Bags and Boxes

Baskets and boxes are not a compromise on open shelving — they are the second half of the system. Willow, seagrass and cotton rope baskets are breathable, which suits wool that needs to dry fully after washing. Line them with a cotton cloth if you are storing silk or cashmere, as rougher weaves can snag fine fibres.

For long-term storage, sealed boxes with gasket lids do a better job against moths and dust. Clear ones let you identify contents without lifting the lid, and stacking them in a cupboard or under a shelf frees the open shelving for yarn you are actively working with. Simple cotton drawstring bags are ideal for oddments, samples and small quantities, and they let fibre breathe while keeping dust off.

Whatever you choose, label it. A strip of masking tape and a pencil, a chalk label tied with string, or a luggage tag on the handle will all do. Write the fibre content, weight, yardage or metreage, and the date you bought it. You will thank yourself in eighteen months.

Keeping Moths and Damp at Bay

Clothes moths are the great enemy of a wool stash, and their larvae feed on protein fibres: wool, silk, cashmere, alpaca and mohair. They prefer quiet, dark, undisturbed places, which is exactly what a closed box in a spare room provides. The best defence is regular handling. Rotate your stash, open boxes, and shake out skeins a few times a year. Larvae dislike disturbance almost as much as they dislike light.

Cedar blocks and lavender bags help a little, but they are deterrents rather than guarantees, and cedar loses its effect as it ages. If you suspect an infestation, seal affected yarn in a bag and put it in the freezer for at least a fortnight, then let it come back to room temperature before unwrapping.

Damp is the other quiet problem in a British home. Lofts, garages, sheds and unheated outbuildings are unsuitable for fibre; so is a kitchen shelf above a kettle. Where you must store in a cool space, add a small sachet of silica gel and check it monthly. Mildew smells faintly musty long before it is visible, and once wool has gone mouldy it rarely recovers.

Arranging Shelves So You Actually Use Them

Group by weight and use rather than by colour alone. Cones and large put-ups live on the bottom or middle shelves where they are easy to lift; 100g skeins sit at eye level; oddments, samples and thrums go into labelled baskets at the top. Within each zone, a loose colour order makes browsing a pleasure and helps you spot gaps.

Keep one basket or shelf for your current project only: pattern, yarn, needles or shuttles, and a notebook. It stops works-in-progress mingling with the main stash, and it makes tidying up at the end of an evening a two-minute job. Reserve a small tray for hand tools — a flick carder, a diz, a pair of snips, a measuring tape — so nothing has to be hunted for mid-warp.

Finally, leave yourself room to grow. A shelf that is only three-quarters full is easier to keep tidy, easier to dust and far kinder to the fibre inside it.