Stashbusting challenges- should I? Or should I forget?

Some muusings, without pictures,,, 

For at least a decade now, I had a gigantic yarn stash, and a pretty sizeable fiber stash. I also had plenty of fabric, most of it I brough home from the US, some I got since we came home, but all hat multiplied by manifold since I started doing historical clothes. I am not going into the hows and whys, you can find parts of that in earlier posts. 

I always said that I refuse to feel bad about that stash, because I never spent money that I needed for stuff like utility bills or food on them, it gave me good feelings when I was down, and it did tide me over when times were hard. 

However, I feel, I got to the total saturation point, to the point of SABLE (Stash Amassed Beyond Life Expectancy - in other words, when one has stash s/he has no hopes of working through his/her lifetime.)

Anyhow from time to time I bump into stashbusting challenges, like "30 yards" a few years ago, when you were supposed to sew up 30 yards of fabric befre you could buy new ones... or some equivalent for knitting. Every time I do that, I keep thinking, I should do it, but then I have a bunch of counterargument. 

One is that just as I am totally incapable of keeping a regular schedule in my life (when I had "regular" jobs, it was the death of me, to have to get there in a certain time every darn day, regardless if I had a task at hand or not - which does not mean, I cannot work, sometimes 16-20 hours a day, or 26 hours straight, if need be), I also have an inherent aversion of things forbidden. Like I do not eat much, I can eat very little meat, or bread, but tell me I cannot eat them, that is all I want. So, if you say I cannot buy yarn, the next time I am in a store that has some, it is guaranteed to have a color, or color combo I really, really would want. 

Second, would it be "fair"? Like the sewing XX meters/yards... I mean, I sew historical clothes. My friend, Ági did a 24 for 24 challenge (sewing up 24 meters of fabric in 2024), and you know what? the white underwear I've shown in the post before the last one used up more than 24 meters of fabric... Also, as I already said, over here (in my country) we do not have fabric districts, or streets like Goldhawk road in London, where you can get literally anything. Like, I am trying to find some fabric that would be remotely suitable for a renaissance gown, and I just cannot find anything since january. Here, if we find something that would be good for anything/something in the realm of historical clothes, we grab them, even if we do not have immediate need for them. Or at least I do. And since we are talking about historical clothes, we grab them by big pieces. Yes, I used up about 27 meters of fabric for those underthings, but then, I went out and bought just as much because there is that lovely embroidered why batiste, that would be great not only for underwear, but some modern stuff for me, and that is one thing I wanted to do much more of for a while now..

So even if I would be relatively okay for yarn and knitting, and I could more or less account that, I am not sure I would, or I would want to come here and report every meters of fabric I get... 

And there is the fact that it is a giant misconception, that once you knit or sew up some part of your stash, you will have more space. No. NOT. Unless you sew/knit for someone else a piece of clothing actually takes up MORE space than the same amount of fabric, neatly folded up and stored, and the same goes for knitting, a sweater takes up more space than the yarn had when it was neatly and thightly packed up.

And there is the question of the yarn and fiber I buy and then dye to sell? Even though I cut back on that severly, I only do the twice-a-year Day of Wool lately, I still buy yarn to dye and then I do sell some of it. Similarly I do have some fabric I got because it was a good fabric, great for some historical stuff, but might not be my color, etc, I got it so if anybody I sew for could use it... how do I account for there? 

But anyhow, let's see... I will NOT have (as it is probably pretty impossible to do) a starting inventory, neither of my yarn or my fabric stash, but I will try to do my best to get less in than I use up, but, of course no guarantees.

As I said, I am relatively okay on yarn and knitting front, especially this year. Though I did stock up in last year's alpaca sale (DROPS), but from January first I did not buy any yarn until the end of February, then I only bough two 50 gramm ball of sockyarn, because... yes, because I fell in love with its colors. And I finally dragged myself through the New Year's Good Luck Sweater, I cast off the last stitch on the day before yesterday, and sewn in all the ends yesterday. I used miscallenous balls of gray and red sockyarn from my stash, so that is about 400-500 gramms of it out. Now, the thing is, that even if I could knit a sweater a month, it would not show up in the size of my stash for at least two or three years. In secret, I hope that I will manage to set up my weaving loom, and then I can manage to speed up using my sock yarn. 

As for my fabric stash... No inventory, and absolutely no promises there, except that I will see, what can I do. As I mentioned, I did buy many meters of that embroidered fabric, for example. But lets draw the line, and see if things go up or down from there. 

What do you think? Do you have any suggestion? Advice? Anything to say?