With years of collecting dolls and the items that come with them (shoes, clothes, shoes…), there comes a time when it just seems like I have too much of everything. Hence my need to purge by going through what I do have and figuring what I no longer need. I like to make piles when I do this.

One pile for things I love/must keep.
One pile for things I’m not entirely sure if I want to part with yet.
One pile for things I don’t recall buying and would totally be okay with parting with.
And one pile for things that I’m not sure why I kept to begin with.

Stock clothes are always keepers!

It’s a lot of piles, but it works. The last two piles are automatically separated from the rest and I come up with prices and bag them up to go into my sundries bag to be brought to the next local dolly meet. Then I go to pile #2, where I’m not entirely sure if I want to keep or not. I tend to keep things if I a) spent “quite a bit” on it, or b) it looks fantastic on most of my dolls. I love pieces that look great on many dolls because it means that I can put in into the general circulation and not be concerned about it not being regularly used. With this system, I’ve actually managed to pull some items out that I no longer need (or want). If only it worked as well on the dolly shoe closet. I have a thing for tiny shoes and it makes it hard to part with things!

How good are you at purging the dolly closet?

If someone had told me back when I started collecting Blythes that I would make lots of new friend and actually get to meet awesome people (both from all over and locally), I probably would have been all “Pssh, no, way too shy to talk to people about dolls”. Yes, how naive was I at the time?

I’ve met some wonderful people, and I’m so glad that I had made the decision to go to BlytheCon in 2011 because it opened up my world to the idea that I wasn’t as alone in the hobby as I thought that I had been. After all, I first bought a Blythe in 2009 and didn’t meet anyone in person until 2011. It was a great feeling to learn that there were others locally that also shared a love for the big-headed, many coloured-eyed doll that I know and love.

Dolls made me happy and it’s great to be able to share that with people who get it and understand it and are willing to talk to me as I go on and on and on about Blythes. Very happy indeed!

The photos I’ve shared are from the most recent meet that I attended locally.

There is still time before the fourteenth to get things together for day of love for your Blythes!

To help you out a bit, here’s a fun little freebie that you can print at home to make some that all of your dolls get a little Valentine. There are 24 different styles, all using vintage images, so that should be more than enough for all of your dolls – unless you really have that many dolls! Each page prints out 48 individual cards.

Stylized like the Valentine’s that I used to get in elementary school, the front is the design and the back is left blank for someone to scribble a little note of wishing someone a happy Valentine’s day.

Click here to download the printable Valentine’s Day cards.

You can find more freebies available on BlytheLife.com on the Freebies page.

There comes a time in any collector’s life that you begin to wonder if you just have too much stuff. (Or maybe it’s just me…) There are people who always seem to be selling dolls, circulating out the old to bring in the new. Ways to justify it to themselves that yes, it’s okay to buy another pricey custom doll because they just sold one, albeit one that wasn’t nearly as expensive but she did sell!

After talking to some people, it’s interesting to see how they decide which doll to sell:

• Last one in is the first the go
• Whoever hasn’t had a photo taken in the longest period of time
• The most expensive one (for those looking to free up some funds)

And it doesn’t just go for dolls, there’s a whole marketplace out there for clothes and shoes and assorted accessories. There is a huge mentality of buying and selling. A little bit like “keeping up” with other people because they are always buying new things, so why shouldn’t you? Well, there are a lot of reasons why someone should or should not buy something – the ability to afford to spend that money ranks very high on the list of reasons of why you should (or shouldn’t) buy that designer doll dress.

This one is clearly a keeper!

I recently decided to go through the very large amount of doll things that I have to figure out what I should or should not keep. Not the dolls themselves, mind you, but the doll things. Like a dress that I don’t recall buying that I don’t think fits with the style of any of my dolls? That goes into the selling pile. The shiny gold dress that I coveted from afar and did a happy dance when I managed to snag it in a quick Etsy update? Keeper! I did that with the shoes too. I have a lot of doll shoes, and I don’t need that many. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a lie… I do need that many. But it’s probably not necessary to have that many pairs of tiny shoes. And if you were to ask Sophie, all the shoes are necessary. It’s a good thing I don’t ask her for advice on what should stay and what should go, I’d never get rid of anything to make room for something new.

How do you decide who (or what) to sell?

Since I stopped doing 365 (with Eden) and since I’m a busy, busy person with school (and all the lovely things associated with school…), I don’t have a lot of time for my dolls. It almost seems ironic when I write that, because of this website. I make time for the site and I take photos of dolls (or use photos already taken) for posts and that, lately, has been the only time that I get to take photos of dolls or at meets, which are thankfully more often than not.

I decided to look at my dolls and see which one has been wearing the same outfit for the longest period of time and unfortunately it is probably Halo. She’s been pretty much wearing this dress (by puppy52) since I bought it and because I haven’t really taken her out to any meets or anything, so there hasn’t been an outfit change. The Kenners and Halo (a custom Blythe) don’t get as much photo time on BlytheLife itself because they aren’t displayed (mostly due to lack of space, stands), so they aren’t often the ones I go for when I need a model for a photo. I couldn’t really tell you just how long it has been since Halo has been in this dress, but if the Flickr set for her is anything to go by, she’s been in that dress since November 9, 2012 (with maybe a couple brief changes, then back again). So much over a year. I think it’s time for a change! Perhaps? But I do love this dress so much.

Is over a year too long for a single outfit? It isn’t as if she’s on display all the time so I don’t really notice that she’s in the same dress day in and day out, but if I were to have to wear the same outfit every day for over a year, I’d be incredibly bored, wouldn’t you be? So is a year too long? I’m sure there’s others out there that have kept their dolls in an outfit for an even longer period of time, but it is time for a change for my dear little Halo…