Both of my parents had hobbies and interests that involved collecting materials to do the task along with the how-to instructions. And both were packrats, though not by the definition of the television programs you see these days. They had room to expand into as far as boxes of stuff, it was never stacked up in a perilous way in the living quarters.

My sewing studio has a large cabinet I built for my daughter when she was a young teen; there was a point in time when you couldn't see any of the floor in her room, so by building this thing that is 30 cubbies (six tall and five across) that are each about 18" deep and about 13" x 12" tall and wide, she was able to categorize stuff and store it in there. What a huge improvement. When she moved away to college I gradually boxed up stuff after taking a photo of the contents of each cubby. The boxes are stacked in the closet with a photo on the front of what is inside. I use the storage cabinet now for my craft stuff and it has a fair amount still of the stuff from Mom's house that I really should sell on eBay or list on the Freecycle site. I don't think I'm ever going to make a yarn pattern rug (using that rubberized stitching backing) though I think some of those braided rugs are nice.

I have tried upholstery but didn't have the patience to do a really good job, so that stuff could probably go also. That's three cubbies emptied right there.