Where I Keep My Doll Accessories

D7ana encouraged me to share my pictures of where I keep my little doll treasures, after she showed us where she keeps some of her doll bits and bobs. I ended up really enjoying taking these pictures, as I realized how blessed I am with the extras I have for my doll residents. I'll start with the biggest piece of storage furniture, a dresser. When we bought a second-hand bedroom set for Daughter Number 2, the Dancer, we had an "extra" dresser, that now stores my clothes. My personal dresser with the mirror became a place to display and store dolls; sometime I will show the top of the dresser.

Top drawer:

Extra clothes for my 16" doll world, plus accessories

A box with compartments containing important stuff like shoes, purses and jewelry

Middle drawer:

Extra Barbie clothes, extra Cissy clothes, and a few things for my 18" Miss America dolls

 Bottom drawer:

I have more space in this drawer than I remembered. Barbie hats, Stacie size doll stands, We Three Friends

I also have some similar Sterilite boxes stored under the overhang of our platform bed. But that's not very picture-worthy.

One of my oldest places to store things is a small, basic plastic three-drawer unit. It is useful for storage; what is an issue is finding the flat space to keep it.

Barbie size shoes

Baby items and toys for babies in the Barbie universe

Kelly dolls, and Barbie's baby sister Krissy. I didn't want her in the higher drawer all alone. :-(

Last in the Barbie storage category is a large compartmentalized case. Again, this is a great place to store things, but I like to leave it flat, and it's too tall to slide under most furniture, and too big to use up that oh so elusive flat space. It also sticks out too much to put it under the platform bed. I struggle with where to keep it.

If Barbie gets hungry or needs a glass of wine, she knows where to go

For the 16" dolls, I also have a wardrobe case. It was made for the vinyl Josephine doll series produced by the Franklin Mint. I got it straight from the Franklin Mint, and I'm glad I did, as FM wardrobe cases run a lot on the secondary market. It's holding one Josephine doll that's not on display, plus a dress, a couple of hats, and some FM accessories.

Since I like having my dolls displayed in dioramas with furniture and props, I've tried to stock up on doll sized armoires for their display bedrooms, and I want them to actually store clothes and things like hats and shoes. I have almost all the armoires/wardrobes that I need; now I need to invest in hangers. Here's one example: a plastic wardrobe from the 8" Madeline doll line, produced by Eden and based on the children's books by Ludwig Bemelmans. Extra Madeline outfits came with hangers, but I don't have any extra clothes at the moment for these girls! However, I do have their hats and some gloves, socks, and shoes.

For my American Girl Samantha, I have a human-sized (on the small side) cedar chest for her clothes, dishes, extra shoes and stockings, etc. The chest itself is not very elaborately built, and probably cost less originally than Josephine's wardrobe case. But it does give Samantha's things a lovely cedar scent.

If you have the dolly money and a little bit of time, sometimes it's good just to scroll through interesting doll categories on eBay and see what you come up with. It's how I found that dresser for my Mary Englebreit dolls (which does store things like Ann's glasses), and also how I found this last piece, which stores jewelry for my 21" Cissy dolls, and other little items (Coca-Cola Cissy comes with a Coke bottle, for example.) This furniture item stands about 21" tall and has a real glass mirror, and two drawers lined with velvet. It was bought from a seller right here in the greater Cleveland area and the seller allowed Mr. BTEG to pick it up. Not only did it save me a lot on shipping, but it was a relief to the seller not to have to worry about packing it up safely enough for the mail. I vaguely remember it being made for some sort of doll club gathering, and it was made by someone who lived at the time only about 10 miles from my current home, going by the writing on the bottom of the chest. But there's so little information that I haven't been able to track down any other furniture this person might have made. Too bad, as this is beautifully made, like a human sized piece of furniture quality.

The main thing you can see in the mirror is my bookcase, with my dolly Christmas tree on top

My family will tell you that I adore buying all sorts of things to use for storage, from rolling carts to little plastic boxes like what you see above. Someday I'd love to go on a shopping spree in a Container Store. I'm always looking to store the maximum amount in a minimum space. Unless I bought another rolling cart (that I don't have floor space for) and filled it with trays for things like my Barbie shoes, Kelly dolls, etc., I think my storage system is about as good as could be, except I ought to get some of my doll clothes out of the plastic storage. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little tour. Do you have any clever storage tricks?