Naomi has a massive amount of fashion doll props, cars, furniture, household items and of course clothes for her guys. Most of this stuff has been stored away for the last few years but now it’s nearly all here at Sisters Beach. Recently she brought some storage drawers like the ones I use for the guys clothes as they had outgrown their original containers. Last weekend she decided to face the task of moving everything into the new drawers and while she was doing it put aside all the clothes that needed washing and/or mending. I had a few larger dolls dresses that were in need of a wash too, mostly those that had become yellowed with age so I volunteered to do hers at the same time.

Currently my baby dresses and all Ken’s whites are soaking in laundry booster. I’m going to leave them overnight then I will wash them in a lingerie bag in the washing machine. The rest of Ken’s clothes I sorted into three piles. One lot, all coloured ones except reds, went into a bag and were washed in the machine with some stuff of my own. Another lot, which had some white parts or had glued on motifs were hand washed in cold water with detergent and laundry booster in a bucket and finally the reds were hand washed in cold water separately from everything else and rinsed several times until they didn’t seem to be turning the water pink.

I then brought everything inside and spread them out on folded towels in the bathroom. A few pairs of trousers were hung over an unused towel rail. Despite my care one or two items did get pink stains just from being near the damp red things but a quick rinse in the bathroom sink fixed all that and the red items were banished to a seperate towel.

Recently I bought myself a tiny craft iron which I thought would come in very handy for doll ironing and sewing jobs so when everything is dry I’ll iron the wrinkles out of anything that needs it.

Later:

After washing and rinsing the whites I put the larger things on the line to dry and brought the small pieces inside. The coloureds were dry so I brought them into the living room to iron. Naomi has a small ironing board but today I decided to use a folded towel on the table because the light is better upstairs. The little iron was not too bad to use. I did have a problem with the cord falling out several times. It is really too big and heavy for such a tiny iron. However, it didn’t get too hot and it did get into the small areas quite well. I found I could use it for several minutes unpowered without it getting cold.

This is just a fraction of the clothing that Naomi has. Some of it is Mattel branded clothing and a couple of pieces are generic or terrible things that I made years ago when we couldn’t get anything else. These days she says she prefers to buy clothing from Etsy and eBay sellers and things made for action figures which are a better fit on the taller, slimmer Ken bodies. They cost more but Mattel rarely makes anything we like in fashion packs.

We may, in the future, present our first all male fashion show. We have a potential Showrunner and some models. It will be a matter of finding the time to set it up. Our fashion doll space is a temporary set up and when Naomi moves in we will have to move everything as that room will become a living room. We’re still working out how we’ll set things up.