American Girl Doll Clothes Wardrobe Project!

I've been wanting to find a way to store all our doll clothes. We have so many great ones but they've always been stuffed (literally) into a huge tote bag and it's hard to find anything. I'd sort it out into categories and one sort later, it was a mish mash again. What a nightmare!

Here is all our doll clothes, laid out on our doll bed.

What a mess!! 

So I've asked for advice from the people on the My Dolls House group on Facebook and between all their amazing ideas, Pinterest and my own thoughts, here is what I came up with.

Doll Friends here is our doll clothes closet!

I started with a zip able plastic wardrobe that I ironically enough had on hand for a organizing project in my own closet that didn't end up fitting. We have a huge European antique wardrobe in our basement great room adjacent to my workspace. It's always only ever held coats we keep for sentiment and costumes etc. so I weeded it out and ade space for my plastic wardrobe! I love the way it came out!

I also had the canvas sorter on hand. It had been in my sons room, in his closet, but it was basically not being used and so snagged it for my doll closet. It has a cubby for 1) night clothes 2) Specialty items (swim suits etc) 3) Long sleeve 4) Short sleeve shirts 5) pants 6&7) skirts 8) accessories (underwear, socks, tights etc)

As you can see, I hung some hats etc on sides with clothes pins. Then, on the 'shelf' on top of sorter, I put all the doll sweaters! Just like my own closet!

Then there was the question of doll hangers... I've made a few in past but it's time consuming. Also, to use the optimum amount of space in the closet, I wanted some way to have the depth of closet get used too. I thought about it, looked at Pinterest and liked idea of using child size hangers with clothes pins attached with glue. My kids are out of that size hangers though and I wanted to get stuff hung up! So... Being me... I thought "What do I have on hand?" Then I remembered these pant hangers I have a ton of because I used to work at a department store. (Yes, I keep everytbing) At first I thought I would need to use a clothes pin to hold up one side of the clothes along with the clip on hanger. I was thinking on people size terms! In doll size terms, that is a big clip! So I played with using just the clip in the middle of item and having two items per hanger so I would get optimal space usage depth wise in closet. Like this:

So I was able to hang up all the dresses and jackets and a few ensembles too!

See you can even put skirt/top sets clipped together!

Shoes came next. I already had them in a canvas organizing bag and so I just put that bag in bottom of closet. Put winter items down on bottom too cos they are not too heavy, such as furs and scarves and such. It's so nice to have it out of tote bags and sorted and able to be used more easily! Even if it gets messy in the cubes when kids play, it is still a hundred time better system than what we had before! So... Now I can make more doll clothes since I'll have a place to store them!

Since I had it all out, I decided to take photos of all the catagories of clothes... Just thought it was interesting and thought you might too. They are below... If you're short on time, I'll just say see you next time right now! Thanks for stopping by!!

Fancier dresses!

Casual dresses!

Jackets and sweaters!

Long sleeve tops and sweaters.

Skirts (and under things)

Pants

Short sleeved tops!

PJs and robes

Skirts and pants I've made.

Dresses I've made...

That's it for now! Thanks for stopping by! 

**UPDATE February 19, 2015**

I have found a different hanger option! As many of you may know, doll hangers are pricey!! So I haven't ever even considered buying any. However, when I was in Tuesday Morning the other day, I was walking by the hanger section and this caught my eye.

Sorry for the photo being sideways... Short on time or I'd edit it again. (Thought I did?!) They were $4.99 which is still a bit pricey to me, but 49c a hanger was more palatable than some I had seen. So for the sake of this blog *giggles* I bought some to test my theory that they'd make good doll hangers. Here is how the dress fit. 

Still a smidge big but not too shabby. I actually think I like my other hanger option better because it affords more used space in closet depth wise but I am sure the 10 hangers I bought will be used in there for the fancier dresses I don't want to crush with the clips. So... There is another idea for you to use for doll clothes hangers!!