Spent today on an unexpected and unwelcome project. Weve always had that our ethnic Barbies that we customize always sell fast in our ebay store: stores.ebay/SouthWest-Fun-Finds?_rdc=1 Last month I had someone go in and bought a huge chunk of my ethic doll inventory out which got me panicking a bit - I dont like having nothing but boring white dolls to sell. So I started looking exclusively for ethnic dolls when I went out to thrift stores...nada. Finally I found a great lot of dolls on ebay for a good price - 9 dolls all ethnic w/ clothes! Woot! They arrived yesterday, I was sooo excited! Then I opened the box - POOF cigarette smoke....on everything. Normally in the past Id throw them in a Rubbermaid tub w/ a bunch of dryer sheets, stick them in a hot place, like the garage (or shed in our case here,) and then forget about them for like a year and let the heat back out the smoke smell and let the dryer sheets suck up the offending scent. However, I need the dolls though, so I did some research and started the long task of trying to de-smokify them. Round 1 1) Removed all clothes and put them aside. 2) Take each doll and thoroughly scrub it from toe to head w/ Clorox bleach wipes. 3) Realized the hair reeked, groaned since several of them the hair was lovely, and scrubbed the hair w/ the Clorox wipes until their hair was drenched and sterilized. 4) Let dolls dry and waited 24 hours to check on them. Round 2) Dolls still smelled faintly of smoke. I had another doll Id gotten from Goodwill this winter that reeked a lot worse than this batch. Ive had her sitting on my work desk ever since and she still smelled bad. I think her smokers poison was Marlboros, whoever had these dolls I think smoked lite cigarettes. Im very picky w/ my dolls - I wont customize or sell them if they stink - even slightly. So time for the next round of work to try to get rid of the odor. 1) Decapitation time - the dealer was being nice and threw in an extra doll in my box so w/ it and my Marlboro stinker I had 11 dolls to try to destink. I decided that even if the hair was nice on some of the dolls the hair had to go because it was holding in much of the smell - so no dolls that I could just sell as-is - all will need to be rerooted. 2) Grabbed the bodies went into kitchen, found Rubbermaid tub, cleaned it out and filled it w/ enough warm water to handle doll bodies stacked about 3 deep. 3) Found bottle of vinegar and poured a few nice glugs into the tub. Put in enough that the water now smelled vinegary and placed dolls in tub - making sure that the 3 dolls who had rubber legs (which smelled the worst) were buried at the bottom of the stack and fully submerged. 4) Went on errands for about 45 minutes, came home, checked on bodies. 5) Bodies, including ones w/ rubber legs passed initial sniff test. Now instead of smelling like smoke, they smelled like vinegar! Woot! Removed headless bodies and have them now air drying in the kitchen. Nice thing w/ keeping them submerged the water got into their body cavities so they got cleaned from the inside out. Round 3) Heads. 5 of the dolls were made in the last couple of years. Mattel has decided to create a new level of hell for customizers by allowing their factories to sew in the hair, then they pour in some silicon glue substance inside the head to keep the hair in place. Result when this stuff dries the heads are hard as rocks, getting the hair out of them takes A LOT of work. Grrrr. 1) Chopped hair down to stubble on all heads. Then took my long nose tweezers and proceeded to yank the hair out through neck hole and cleared out each head. Stupid gluey heads took me like 20-30 minutes each to clean out. 2) Took Clorox wipes and cute them into quarters. Took 1 square and scrubbed outside of head being careful not to scrub off face paint. Took 2nd square folded it up tight and shoved it inside the head, took tweezers and scrubbed the inside of the head completely, then removed sheet. 3) Took the now scrubbed head and dunked it in a bowl of the vinegar/water solution that Id used for the bodies. I held the heads in the solution a little longer w/ the face paint side of the head out of the water so the paint wouldnt get soft and want to come off. Holding the head that way a little longer allowed the liquid to really get into all of the holes in the head. 4) Wiped heads clean w/ clean paper towels and set heads aside, upright to dry. I now have 11 plucked heads drying in my craft room. The clothes have been completely doused twice w/ Fabreeze. Im thinking theyll also get dunked in the vinegar solution, thrown in a pillow case and then thrown in w/a load of wash to get fully clean. Initial round of Fabreezing already has cleared out a lot of the smell - I just want to get any nicotine that might be on them off. Will wait and see by tomorrow how the dolls are doing before I fully celebrate. They might need another round w/ the vinegar rinse before theyre fine. Ill keep you posted.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 02:13:20 +0000
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