Clothing storage: how do you do it?

Many many boxes (this shelf is doeble stacked - there are more boxes behind the ones you can see)

There are more (smaller) shelves elsewhere in the room too. They're boxed by size. Gender in some cases, and specific dolls in some but generally just by size

I have a little hanging rail and hangers I was intended to use for some of the more crushable dresses, but never got around to it (over 10 years now). The few dresses I did get around to putting on the hangers just got dusty between uses.


Teddy

 

So far I have a little set of clear acrylic drawers from Marshall's meant for makeup supplies. They stack nicely and I can see exactly what's inside.

 

I own mainly 1/3 dolls. My doll storage currently looks like this.



Everything BJD related is in this closet, except for half of the doll boxes (under my bed) and the dolls themselves (on display around the home). It actually used to be more spread out around my home, but I recently had to relocate everything into the closet. I have a lot of doll stuff! I was amazed I managed to fit it all in.

"Retrieval" is very important to me - I hate rummaging for things, I want to reach into the container and pull out exactly what I want, immediately. So my method is modular storage: everything doll-related has a home somewhere in the system, I can pull things out and put them back easily without disturbing other things, and I can expand/add on a new storage unit without having to reorganize the existing stuff. Pretty much everything is in drawers, tubs or boxes that I can pull out and take to anywhere in my home, and a lot of things are in smaller bags/containers within the tub.

I'm quite obsessive about labelling: if I want a fast retrieval time, I have to be able to look at a container and immediately know what's inside. So I slap a label on everything -- wig bags, eye boxes, clothing boxes and bags.... Some storage tubs have their own inventories: I write the contents of the tub on a flashcard and stick the card on the tub's lid.

This storage system works because I'm tidy by nature and always put things away. Again, I hate rummaging, so when my retrieval time gets too long, that's my cue to organize the system further so that everything has a home somewhere.


How I store doll clothes:


The orange bags are these shoe bags from Ikea. I unpackage most of the doll clothes from their original packaging and store them in here, usually organized by doll or by outfit. They're long enough that a lot of my 1/3 clothes (pants, coats) can lie flat without folding, and they can also expand nicely and hold a lot of items. These bags also are breathable and not airtight: I do buy pleather clothes, and I've read that pleather lasts longer when stored in breathable material. Let's see how it goes over the next few years!

I also keep a digital inventory of literally every BJD thing I own. I use the Notion app, it has a very good database system. It took some time to set up the database, but now that it's all set up I can quickly add new items to it. Yeah it might be very overkill, but I do like keeping track of my stuff and all the little details surrounding them ... knowing where/when I bought something, how much it cost, all the different parts in a fullset outfit, etc...

My inventory also works a bit like a "look book" when I want to change my dolls' outfits. I can easily look through the photos, and put together a clothing scheme in my mind, or see which fullset outfits I haven't used for a while. (Yes, my inventory includes my own photos of the dolls' stuff. I did say this was overkill...)

I go into more detail about my storage method on my BJD blog - here's my blog post with more pics.

 

That's an impressive organization system, and I bet it comes in handy having all that info on hand when buying or selling things!

 

I was thinking the same.

Teddy

 

@P0laris @Teddy Thanks. I started thinking about storage quite early on, when I didn't have many dolls or things - I had a feeling I was going to accumulate a lot and really quickly. (And I did - there's just so much stuff in this hobby. ) So the storage and my digital inventory grew alongside my doll collection, I tweaked it to work for me, and it runs really well now. It's quite easy to add to it and I basically don't have to think about it anymore.
And yeah, the digital inventory also helps me with selling and just remember what the heck I own. I dislike racking my brains trying to remember information, as much as I dislike rummaging for physical things.

 

My dolls’ clothing is stored in nice-looking things like dressers, trunks, and large decorative boxes. All these things also double as display, with dolls on top or nearby, interacting with them. The clothes themselves are tucked into zip-lock bags (one per complete outfit so nothing gets lost) and stored within one of these larger items.

 

I keep my dolls' clothes in one of those grid wall box shelve thingies. They hang neatly on printed hangers. Or displayed on 3D-printed mannequins. I used to have several boxes, but I have to see what my dolls have, otherwise I forget and make the same stuff over and over again. XD

 

I'm pretty simple and I put outfits (especially outfit sets) into individual bags, and then I put them into doll boxes. They're just sitting there in my closet, so I think they're nice to use as storage!