As I mention on YouTube, I'm planning on repainting my room this summer, so I'll be changing my displays and trying to downsize pretty majorly. (I think. Let's see how strong I can be in my resolve.) ;) I have some pictures I'd like to hang up, and at this point, I have almost no wall space left. Plus, after six years of collecting, I'm just flat running out of room. I want to reevaluate my collection, get rid of some of the things that aren't as special to me, and try to be a little more proactive in planning what else I purchase.
Besides feeling the need to downsize, I have several things I'm saving up for, including a possible trip to Arizona this fall to visit my best friend around my birthday. I also need to start saving for Mount Hermon next year and our church's Ladies Retreat. Oh, and I recently found out that one of my story locations in Trinidad, California is actually a rental house 200 feet away from the beach. I thought it would be super fun to save up and stay there some weekend. ;)
There are other things, like windows for our house, paying off some debts, swimming lessons for the girls, and more. And I'll admit it, I'm thinking about saving up for one of the Limited Edition Disney Store dolls that will hopefully be released for the live action version of Beauty and the Beast next year. I've never been able to afford a Disney Store LE doll yet. It would be so great if it worked out this time around. :D Of course, at this point I have no room for a LE doll...yet another reason for downsizing. ;)
If Hubby gets more hours in his new position this summer, that will help tremendously with some of these things, but I'd love to do what I can to help. I have so much. I don't really need it all.
So, here are a few pics from my room as it is currently.
My doll rooms with lights. :)
My toy and book shelves on our dresser.
Zelfs, Lalaloopsies, jewelry, and my favorite picture of me and Hubby.
Plush friends on the bed.
My Beauty and the Beast curio.
My little white shelf with extra books and my live action Cinderella collection.
My Frozen and Tangled shelves.
This picture was taken by accident. (My phone often takes pictures without telling me.) I thought it looked kind of cool, though. My daughters and I decided it looked like a magical portal in my room. Who knew there was one there all along? ;)
So if you'd like more detail on any of these spots, feel free to stop by my YouTube channel and check out my room tour videos. You can see Part One HERE and Part Two HERE.
As I was working on these videos, I was curious about some of my previous displays, so I found some old blog posts with pictures and videos of my doll rooms/displays and how they've changed over the years. If you're interested in sharing my trip down memory lane, you can check out the following links. ;)
My Dolls (August 4th, 2010) ~ This was back at the very beginning of my doll collecting and blogging, in 2010. Here are the original girls from my 18" collection and their displays. This post also has my original "personality profiles" for each doll. ;)
Thrift Store Find and a Rearranged Doll Room (September 23rd, 2010) ~ This was the first of many rearranging projects, about a month after the previous post. ;) It was a fun time to collect. I had almost nothing, so it was easy to find things for my dolls. Everything remotely doll-sized ended up coming home with me. ;) Thrift stores and garage sales were treasure troves and scavenger hunts in which I always found success. I can't even tell you how many things I now pass by that I would have snatched up in a second at this stage of my collecting.
My Updated Doll Rooms (September 1st, 2011) ~ The next post I found was a year later. In that amount of time, my doll accessories and collections had grown enormously. This was also my "computer desk as a doll room" stage. It was a great way to repurpose, especially since the computer desk was a free hand-me-down from a friend. Although at this time my focus was still primarily on my 18 inchers, I was starting to branch out into other doll lines. This was also when Belle's Bulletins was starting to gain momentum.
Rearranging My Doll Rooms (January 9th, 2012) ~ This was the stage when my 18" doll rooms pretty much made up 90% of our room. ;) I had displays on both dressers and one in my newest repurposed doll room: our old entertainment center. You can't see it as much in this post, but it's more visible in the next one.
Hayden and Jenna's New Room (April 21st, 2012) ~ Wow, I didn't realize I'd had the rooms my dad made for this long. Four years? Time definitely flies by. This was the first of the three doll rooms my dad made for me. This original one sat on top of the previously mentioned entertainment center until the other rooms were built later that year. I remember how excited I was to have my first "official" doll room. :)
Just in Case You Thought I Was Being Lazy... (July 17th, 2012) ~ This was one of my typical apologetic posts, explaining why you guys hadn't heard from me in so long. ;) The reason? What else? Rearranging! (Among other things.) ;) Even though things were pretty cluttered at this point, it was one of my favorite periods of collecting. I loved all of my BFC Ink dolls in their fancy dresses, my doll rooms, and everything. I'd forgotten all about my Pleasant Company Samantha I had for a while. I think she was one of the dolls I ended up selling. Shortly after this post, I got really overwhelmed by the amount of big dolls I had and sold several of them. You can also see by the inelegant plastic drawer unit full of stuff that my tiny toy collections were growing as well.
In this post, you also get a bonus look at my daughters' playroom. :)
My New Doll Rooms, Post #1! (September 1st, 2012) ~ This was the first in a series of posts I did right after my dad finished my other two doll rooms. I'm only going to link to this first one, because each of the posts in the series have links leading to the next. I had so much fun filling these new doll rooms. It was great to look back and see how I originally had them arranged. ;) This also was one of the most in-depth looks at my doll displays and accessories. I took pictures of almost every inch of space. ;)
The End of the School Year and a Special Tour (May 24th, 2013) ~ This was the only post with pictures of my room I could find for this stage of collecting, and it also includes a tour of my whole house. (Yet another fun batch of memories. Our house has changed a lot, too!) This was the "white shelves covering the windows but allowing me to have lots more stuff" stage. ;) While it was nice having so much display space, I eventually got tired of not being able to see my window, and I was constantly worried about sunlight damage to the toys and books on those shelves. My room also started to feel very closed and cave-like during this stage, since there were shelves everywhere and almost no wall space at all.
New Doll Room Vids Up on YouTube (April 30th, 2014) ~ This short little post has no pictures, but has links to YouTube videos of my room during 2014. There weren't too many changes overall, aside from a few more white shelves added and more stuff collected. ;) You can see how my interests grew and changed to include even more doll and toy lines.
New Room Tour Video Up and Your Questions Needed (January 28th, 2015) ~ And here is an example of my collecting at its craziest. My philosophy at this stage was "if you have it, display it." I felt it was silly to have things stored away and never enjoy them. While I still hold to this point of view overall, I found that having this much stuff out on display just got too overwhelming, which is why I recently went through things and decided to store some of it. I still only store what I can fit in my room, and I try to rotate things occasionally. As crazy as this stage was, though, it was also a LOT of fun to see all of the bright colors and cheerful faces every time I entered my room.
Thankfully, I have a very patient husband who is not creeped out by dolls. ;)
***
There are probably other posts with pictures that I missed, but this gives you a basic rundown of the changes through the past six years. Hope you enjoyed the memories as much as I did. ;)
How have your collections changed through the years? Do you ever look back and regret a doll or toy you no longer have? What direction do you see your collecting going in the future?
I like it that your room is organized. How do you keep your dolls so clean?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous. :) Honestly, they're not as clean as they look. All of them have a thin layer of dust. But I try to use a duster on them every once in a while.
ReplyDeleteIt also helps that I love rearranging things. ;) Every time I rearrange my displays, I dust everything pretty thoroughly.
But I have found that dolls and toys look clean enough when you HAVEN'T dusted in a while if you just keep them where they are and don't move them. It's only when you pick them up and see the dust-free spot where they've been that you realize how dusty they are. ;)
Yes, I have regrets about things I've gotten rid of over the years. That's probably why I don't get rid of enough. I have regrets about having too much too. My biggest regret is that I didn't stick with just the vintage Vogue Ginny dolls that I enjoy. They're small dolls. I branched out into Chatty Cathy and have some of them, but I haven't bought any more in a long time. They take up more room. Then I also bought a few Ann Estelle and Betsy McCall family dolls. I don't want to get rid of any of them now, but I wish I hadn't started. Every so often I purge a little. It's not the dolls so much as all the "stuff" I have to go with them. I enjoy setting up scenes and have a lot of "stuff" for scenes. I'm 70 now so I also think about what my sons are going to do with all my dolls and "stuff" someday. Will they carefully go through it? Probably not. I joke that they'll have an estate sale they can be proud of.
ReplyDeleteForgot...I do plan to watch some of your videos at my leisure.
ReplyDeleteHi Betty! Thanks for stopping by and sharing. I can definitely relate to branching out to more dolls than you originally planned to. And once you have them, it's super hard to get rid of them. In some ways, getting rid of some of my 18 inch dolls would make the most sense, since they take up the most room. I'm very attached to them, though, and have regretted the 18 inchers I've gotten rid of in the past.
ReplyDeleteLetting go is not as easy as it seems.
It's sad that you don't have anyone in your family that will enjoy keeping at least a few of your dolls after you are gone. I hope you're able to enjoy your collections, though, no matter what the outcome. :)
Hope you enjoy the videos as you have time to watch them! :)
Wow, you've published more blog posts about your toy collection over the years than I ever realized. I've looked at and/or read all the ones that you've put up since I started following your blog, but I missed many of the older ones you've linked to above. I think it's neat that you can go back and examine how your collection has changed year-to-year like that.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to need to weed out my toy collection again one of these days too, but I'm still in denial about my current space constraints and keep buying even though I don't really have the room for any more. :) Or maybe I'm just subconsciously working on auditioning for that hoarders television show.
Your toys are much more organized than mine. The bulk of my MOC/MIB ones are hanging on the walls, but the loose ones are all over the place. I have some on display on shelves and what not, but many of them are packed away in boxes, bags, carrying cases, or just heaped in unattractive piles (I seriously have a small mountain of mixed dolls just piled up on top of one another on an otherwise unused armchair--a small Fairytopia Fairy Barbie is currently lying on top of said mess as I write this, so, I guess she's "Queen of the Mountain" at the moment).
I don't have any specific plans for expanding my collection in the future, other than just adding to it in general (I collect a little bit of almost everything, so, that's not hard to do). There are lots of items that I'd like to have, but I'm patient, and just grab things as I can when the opportunity and finances allow. It's surprising the things that you can acquire secondhand, for next to nothing, if you wait long enough too.
I regret selling my huge childhood G.I.JOE, Star Wars, and Masters of the Universe toy collections during my teen years (which is how I financed a lot of my video game and comic book purchases at the time). I've reacquired some of them here-and-there, but, without the investment of literally thousands of dollars (at today's secondary market prices), I'll never have all of that stuff again.
Hi Mark! Nice to hear from you. :) To be honest, I didn't remember how many past collection posts I'd done, either. ;) It was really fun to look back and see the changes from year to year.
ReplyDeleteLol, I have my moments of denial myself. Although, Hoarders is what I watch to remind myself why I need to think more about what I purchase. I'd rather not get to that point. ;)
My first job was in a toy store, and one of the things I learned there was how to properly display toys, so I think that's where a lot of the toy organization comes from. ;) I am definitely not a naturally tidy person, though. My perfectionist, oldest child side is constantly at war with my creative, collector side. I tend to battle piles of laundry or dishes more than piles of toys. Except in the girls' rooms. ;)
Your purchasing ideas sound similar to mine. Other than shooting for a LE Beauty and the Beast doll next year (which requires more planning), I tend to purchase here and there when I can. I do want to try to keep myself a little more accountable, though.
Oh, I can imagine the regret for selling some of your older toys. Isn't it crazy how much some of the vintage toys from our childhood are going for now? I didn't collect any Star Wars or G.I.Joe, but I regret some of the My Little Pony and Lady Lovely Locks stuff I sold. I don't think my collectibles have quite ventured into the same price range as yours, but it still would cost a good deal more than I would like to pay to replace some of my childhood toys.