Has it really been 9 years since my last post about this project? How in the world is that even possible? Oh – I know! I put my “mini-ing” aside to focus on rewriting the Second Edition of the Petite Princess and Princess Patti Reference Guide. (See tab on the menu bar for more on that) Then I got super involved in my genealogy research and writing. I can’t use the pandemic as an excuse because that should have encouraged working on anything at home. The last year was a busy one! We moved from Hamden, where I lived since 1959, to the quiet little town of Woodbury, about an hour northwest.
That brings me to today’s post. In anticipation of the move from house to condo, I began “downsizing” in earnest. This included clearing out many minis in my collection. I posted my 1965 Petite Princess Castle Store Display for sale on various sites but hadn’t sold it before the move.
As it turns out, the new condo has more space than the house! But, I will admit it is nice to have a lot of clutter gone. The store display ended up in a corner of the laundry room and all the dollhouse miniatures got “shelved.”
Fast forward a year. Last week, a new member of the Facebook Group, Petite Princess Dollhouse Delights (run by my friend and co-author Linda Gant) purchased the display! The impending sale actually motivated me to organize my collection. I spent two enjoyable days sorting all the treasures, and then I decided to put the Hoarder House back in order.
As you may remember (if you have a fantastic long-term memory) this house was built by my mother for our two girls. We brought the house to our home in June 1997 to continue work on it. Then we had a house fire. The house sat for years after the fire because I just couldn’t bear to work on the mangled structure. At some point, after my mother passed in December 2011, I decided to decorate it in her memory. Many of the items in the house are related to my mother’s various hobbies and interests.
There are many ways to honor a person’s memory. Creating a dollhouse focused on a person’s life is a fun and unusual way. I’m not sure if my mother would appreciate that I called this project the Hoarder House. I started calling it by that name in jest and it just stuck. No disrespect intended, Mom.
We know you were a “collector,” who, in your own words, just “acquired things!”
My plan going forward is to highlight some of the contents of the house, telling the story of the items and how each one tells a story about my mom.
My Mother’s Closet
The bedroom is papered in Blue Onion – a design fixture of my mother’s kitchen. (See this post for a bit more on that.) The actual closet is built using plans from the Nutshell News dollhouse magazine. I saved that magazine from July 1990 and finally completed the project in 2018!
inside window frame before she added the plastic and installed it!
The closet is a representation of one found in a 1948 woman’s magazine. All the closet accessories are made of paper towels coated in blue spray paint. Looks pretty realistic, I think!
Let’s take a tour of the closet.
The plastic boxes on the second shelf are filled with 1″ scale Barbie boxes. Yes, Mom did have tote boxes of Barbies in her closet. One of the last things she told my sister Jeanne was that she had stashed a red checkbook (to some secret account?) in her closet. Of course, we searched for it. No checkbook! But we did make some money selling the Barbies!! Hmmm…maybe I need to add a teeny-weeny red checkbook in here somewhere!
Peeking out of the drawer is a piece of lace from one of my great-grandmother Sophie’s collars. My mother adored her grandmother, Sophie Weiss Spiegel so it’s fitting that there is a teeny photo of Sophie and her children sitting atop the chest. The little girl at the far right is my mother’s mother (my grandmother!) Rose Spiegel Lichtenthal. Sophie’s son Emile and eldest daughter, Claire complete the picture. This photo is probably from 1909 and was taken in Semarang, Indonesia where the family lived until 1911.
My final story about this closet is about the garment bags. Mom hung several garment bags in our basement, next to the dryer. Mom always told us that if we break anything not to tell her, just get rid of it. Not sure what the logic was there—wouldn’t she be looking for the missing item? One day, I broke my treasured Petite Princess piano. I guess I thought I might repair the piano so I stashed the pieces at the bottom of one of the bags. Mom was NOT happy when she discovered my deception!
Stay tuned (Subscribe!) to this blog for further updates to this project. I’ll try to get the next one within the next 9 years!!
Dorette Creations 