Shipping horror stories and new space

Most of us have the same problem after a couple of years in this hobby – we run out of space. Not only space for the clothes, props, boxes and all the materials we need for creative work. Space for the dolls themselves. Some people are in the lucky position to have a room just for the dolls, but I am not.

I like to store my resin dolls in the dark. Of course I could just leave them in their boxes, but I know from experience that dolls in boxes don’t get that much playtime. Thanks to IKEA it was easy to find a storage solution, in my case white BILLY cases with doors. I had quite a few of those without doors for my books already before I started with the dolls. But unfortunately the doors don’t fit on the old version of the BILLY cases. For the longest time I managed to fit my dolls into two cases, one 2m high with half panel/half glass doors and one 76cm high with panel doors.

 

The large dolls are in the lower part of the high case, and my KIDS, JIDs, Raccoon and Myou are crammed into the low cabinet. Some of the tiny dolls are in their boxes, and some sit on other doll’s laps.

Full house, and the only thing I could do was either stop adding new dolls or buy a new cabinet. And since I hope Raccoon will release KID dolls that match the mature Raccoons, and there are still some other future doll plans, a new cabinet it was.

And now I have to start a bit of a rant. I ordered the cabinet online and paid quite a bit of money for the delivery. The delivery was supposed to arrive a week after I ordered, but for some reason the IKEA system managed to mess up my zip code. Of course the delivery failed. I stayed home for hours to no avail, surrounded by a pile of boxes and stuff. I took everything out of my other book cases to make it easier to move them.

After I got the email informing me the delivery failed, I called the shipping company to ask what happened, and they promised to deliver on Saturday. Another couple of hours spent waiting for a delivery that didn’t come. On Monday IKEA sent another email with a shipping notice for Wednesday. On Wednesday I stayed home, eagerly awaiting my cabinet, and really ready to put all the boxes back where they belong. The delivery didn’t come. This time I spend about an hour on the phone with half of it hold time, and they told me the parcel was left behind by the carrier somewhere in a depot. Mind you, the hotline-people were really nice and helpful (and it wasn’t their fault of course), but I was still a tiny bit miffed. They eventually managed to give me another delivery date, the first Saturday in December, almost a month after the order date.

I used that as an excuse to order a tiny Monst Savage doll for consolation. I hope I will get her this year, and of course you will see her here.

And yesterday on Saturday the delivery really happened. Nothing was missing, nothing was broken. You can imagine my relief to finally start assembling and get rid of the mess. Since I have already assembled a couple of these cabinets, it was done in half an hour.

 

But I spent half of my Sunday arranging and re-arranging stuff and shelves. With such a lot of boxes and and things it’s really a challenge to figure out how to fit everything in. Not only the doll clothes and props, but all my DVDs and craft stuff as well. It’s still far too much stuff, really. But I like the result. And I can’t believe all the dolls were in one cabinet before. Now even the small dolls can leave their boxes and have their space in the cabinet. And there’s room left for those to come :). I even found some spare fairy lights in a box and they add a bit of light.

 

 

If I could only find a way to minimize the dioramas in my other room, I would be perfectly happy. But having this space back to tidy and organized already reduces my stress level a lot. And the additional reflection from the white doors adds more light to the room.