When I was little, I loved playing dolls.
Here’s how it went:
I spread out my Little Kiddles set, which held the collection of dolls and accouterments.
The afternoon was spent arranging miniature closets for miniature dresses. Ribbons becamse room dividers, match boxes became drawers for miniature pairs of shoes. Once everything was set up and perfect it was time for supper and bed. The play was all about organizing things!
And so… on my day off I derive extreme pleasure from setting things in order. I notice this as I cover my winter sweaters with plastic. As I group the furry things together and the shiny things together, and put them in the back of the closet.
This gives me so much pleasure that I look for something else to put in order.
Since the house is already fairly neat (you can imagine this) I decide to take my scraps of pesky passwords out of the pesky password bowl and put them in a file folder under a broader category “important documents.”
I’m not O.C.D. It just feels delicious when things are in order.
It feels so good that I start a new project – putting my paper calendar on a google calendar!
students in blue
church in green
dentist, etc in red
personal in purple
Ahhhh!
Better than going for a massage.
the sacred ordinary 
Oh this is so cool. I still have barbies and dawn dolls but not the kiddles – those were my sister’s faves, I think. (we had those little perfume bottle dolls too which i always thought were weird…like little genies in bottles?) we’d spend all day “setting up” in much the same way using whatever we could find. often we each claimed a different room of the house for our real estate. sometimes we were given new clothes or hand-made clothes for them or taught how to sew things for them, but never all those fancy store-bought things like cars, furniture or activities accessories kits. (i blame my creativity on this minor childhood deprivation.) and then at supper time, “girls, time to clean up” – always and evermore, this stunned us…what? put it all away?!?!
but i digress…i love how you made the connection from child to adult “play” 🙂
chris and the boys made me a funny modern dollhouse when they were younger so i set up a christmas doll house almost every year. it’s very extravagant. i don’t think i can post a foto here…it looks like it is showing up as a link.
/Users/kathleenccooper/Desktop/christmas dollhouse 2011.jpg
here goes
My favorite was always “Lily”, who came in a bottle that smelled like Faux Lily of the Valley. I saw a picture of her on the internet today (from whence I obtained the picture in the post) and looking at it brought the sweet plastic scent rushing back.