I am a sewer and knitter. I buy patterns. A lot of patterns – and those patterns have always been physical copies. Ok for clothing you pretty much need a physical pattern so you can cut out fabric. That’s one thing. But for quilts and knitting, does it really have to be a paper copy?

Since I’m packing to move, I’m finding out just how many patterns/books/leaflets/printouts I have. The volume is tremendous. I will never make all this stuff even if I were to live to be 100 years old. But still I have them and I get more. Most of the stuff I get online now has a digital download. I put the file on my computer and promptly print it out and put it in a 3 ring binder, even if I have no immediate plans to make that project. I have no idea why.

Used to be that hard drive space on a computer was expensive. I put a lot of stuff on floppy disks rather than keep it on a hard drive. (Side note, found a lot of those floppy disks when I was cleaning out. Even a couple of 8″ floppies. That takes me back a bit.) Not any more. The new laptop I got has a terabyte of storage. A TERABYTE. If I think about movies, that would hold 250 movies. If I think about average photos, that can hold 2 MILLION PHOTOS. And I’m still printing stuff out????

I am slowly changing things over in my world to digital. I don’t use the public cloud, but I have a couple of external hard drives, and back up my own files. All my music is now digital. My photos for the last 5 years are all digital. I’ve had an e-reader for about 10 years to free up bookshelf space. It is time to get my patterns into the digital age. Think of all the shelf space in the sewing room that will free up.

There are a couple of things that I will always keep. I have a great book with basic knitted sweater patterns in it. I’ll keep that. I have a few cookbooks that are fabulous reference books. I’ll keep those. I have all of Elly Sienkiewicz Applique books that are no longer in print and I will keep those. The rest of it however, will get converted to digital and stored that way. I need the shelf space for fabric.