Cleaning Up My Doll Spaces

Those of you who have been following my story for a while know that my horse, Panama, has been sick since April.  And really sick, for much of that time - to the point where I was spending most of my days at the barn.  It resulted in me not getting much done for several months.

It also resulted in my house being a mess.  I mean, it's always kind of a mess, because that is (sadly) how I am.  But it got worse.  Much worse.

Early this year, I made it my goal for 2022 to make my doll spaces in my house more usable and enjoyable.  The goal was to organize my doll storage, make my kitchen a better space where I could work on dolls (and, on occasion, actually cook), and my living room a place where I could... well, live.

I'd gotten a good start on things.  We reorganized the storage in my (all too small) one car garage, and had started organizing my doll room when Panama got sick.

So for months, I did nothing.  Except occasionally buy things that never got put away and just piled up on available surfaces, because... that's what I do.

Now that my horse is doing better (down to four meals a day, which means more time to do things in between trips to the barn!), I'm trying to get caught up on all the things I had originally planned to do this year, except that now everything is even worse than before.  Friday I started by working on the kitchen.  I took a bunch of dolls and clothes and other various purchases upstairs, and cleared space where I can work on rehabs and film videos again.  It's been a while since I've been able to do either.

Believe it or not, this is actually after I cleared the huge pile of dolls on top of the stove and cutting board.  I'm hoping to make much more progress with the remainder of this weekend.  Much of what you see here is either things I need to fix or stuff I need to sell.  I need a better place to corral the projects-in-waiting, and to sell the stuff that needs to be sold so that it's not just taking up space in my house.

Once the kitchen is done, I'll start working on consolidating, organizing, and decluttering in other areas of the house.  I have some big things that are taking up space that I need to sell locally, lots of clothes to list as I go through and locate all of my duplicates, and entire bins full of project dolls - some to keep, many more to sell.

And as I make sense of the mess, ultimately I want to reorganize my doll room so that I can use that space again.  Right now you can barely get inside, as I pushed a bunch of stuff in there and closed the door  (the 42-year-old equivalent of cleaning your room by shoving everything into the closet), but ultimately I want it to be a space where I can dress dolls, decorate my dollhouses, and set up displays.

Our plans for tomorrow were canceled, so I'm hoping to use the unexpected free time to make a bunch of progress on what you see here!