Pardon The Dust

Well, it looks like almost everything made it during the move. There were a few casualties but I'm okay with it. It's just stuff. We've deemed an extra bedroom as a library. This room is going to be books and dollhouses...and probably other toys which this family has too many. When guests come to stay, they always end up sleeping in "miniatureville". No one ever complains though. Some even like the Kaleidoscope House nightlight. Chuckles.

I finally got to put together one of my Green Dollhouses by Plan Toys. I love that new dollhouse smell. Ha ha! The rooms are small in the structure and so I plan to link two together to make one large home to decorate. I also plan to set them up as two separate structures so that it looks like a planned development or green home community.

I have recently acquired more miniatures and I am really hoping to get some time soon to set up some scenes. However, I need to crack open the boxes of all the packed away dollhouse inventory and put them in their proper places so that I can work...or do I mean 'play'?

I get a lot of emails asking about how I organize my miniatures and the short answer is "not very well." The IKEA Varde unit is my friend and I always have to have another closet to stack totes of all the dollhouse stuff that I don't utilize as often or contain pieces that I simply collect. Here is a sample of some of the stuff that needs to go in the Varde unit.

I used to keep an inventory list with prices and dates indicating when items were acquired but now I just pack like items in with each other. There's a few totes full of Bodo Hennig; some with Kaleidoscope House items; some with PRD; etc., etc. Here is the sea of totes among everything else that needs to be organized. These totes hold some items that I put in the Varde, but mostly they all get stacked in the closet and shuffled through periodically.

I keep small items like decorations, art, food, figures and other accessories in rolling carts that I tuck in corners or in a closet that I've laid claim to. I also keep the mini figures that I collect in totes. Here's one cart full of the figures I use most often for this blog sans the Goose Grease peg dolls which have their own storage case.

I hope to someday hire a carpenter to build custom cabinetry that extends around the room. That way I could put houses on the top of the built-in and store miniature items in pull out drawers underneath--then everything would be in its place. Honestly, I could use that right now--that whole "everything in its place" scenario. I better return to unpacking. Sigh.