American Girl Organization

I originally shared this on Jennifer Francis' link up.  Today I'm sharing again on Kelly's Korner for "Show Us Your Life - Organization."  It's been 6 weeks since we organized the doll clothes and it's still working great.  That's a record around here!

Jennifer has asked for our tips about organization, and I have to admit that I'm just a teensy bit Type A.  Just a smidge.  If you open my silverware drawer, all the knife blades have to be turned in the same direction.  My closet is color coded.  I have problems.

The biggest organizational disaster at our house had to be our American Girl doll clothes.  My mother sews and loves to make outfits for Emma's dolls.  We've made several trips to the American Girl store where we've left with better clothes for the dolls than I have for myself.  Emma is also the only granddaughter on Kevin's side of the family, so his mother and sister really enjoy going girly with her.  We have lots of clothes.

This lovely piece of plastic was how we were storing the doll clothes.  Not only was it ugly -

But the doll clothes always looked like a wadded up mess.  Lots of American Girl clothes fasten with Velcro, so if you reached in to pull out a skirt, it might be attached to a dress, which would be hooked to a sweater, which would be hooked to some jeans - you get the picture?  A string of wadded up clothes.  It kind of made me a little freaky.



Enter the purple chest!

Emma says purple is pretty.  I say this chest is a life saver!  I found this for $17 at Target.  It comes folded in a package, but when you put it together (which is easy - just pop it out), the chest is sturdy, the top is padded and the instructions say it supports 120 pounds.  We haven't tested that.  (It does hold 48 pounds.  A little blond person sat on it.)


For the clothes, we bought gallon Ziploc bags that have the slider seals.  Inside each bag we put a piece of card stock for support.  Then, we put one outfit in each bag and Emma labeled that bags with a Sharpie.

It took a little while, but we watched a movie until the boys came upstairs for a marathon round of "Madden NFL."  I like how Emma labeled one bag "McKeena's Dress."  Whoops.

The bags fit perfectly in the chest, and she has been very good about putting the clothes back in the bags (maybe because she helped me organize them).


I moved the eyesore into our playroom closet and we store some of our other doll clothes that she doesn't play with very often and doll hair accessories in it.

We found this idea after searching on Pinterest. It always makes me proud when I actually DO one of the things I've pinned.