DIY a portable dollhouse out of stuff you’d probably throw away

My five-year-old and I made this awesome dollhouse out of scraps: an old box for the building itself, and carpet, fabric, and tile samples. My son Noah’s own drawings framed in old slide holders. Paper attached and coated with Modge Podge served as the wallpaper, and glue sticks and a wood veneer sample for the kitchen table (affixed with wood glue). A sunscreen bottle cap became the toilet (it opens and closes!), and a sponge covered in fabric for the bed. It turns out poker chips are perfectly sized doll plates, and you can make tiny stools out of wooden thread spools.

Yep, we made an entire dollhouse out of stuff you can probably find just lying around.

Here’s the living room/dining room/bathroom/kitchen side, which we made from the bottom of the box:

And here’s the bedroom side, the box’s top:

All closed up for storage:

We’re lucky to have access to a truly fantastic store that sells almost-unbelievably cheap and almost-unbelievably random crap for arts and crafts projects (including the very sturdy vintage binoculars box), but of course you could use any number of odds and ends from the recycling bin or around the house. We picked up the wooden figures at an antique shop for a few dollars and then felt they needed a home.

This is a really free-form craft project. (It could be a zoo, an aquarium, a school, all manner of locations.) But do think about how your box closes before you glue on the furniture and decorations, so that you can avoid making box-closing impossible for the finished product: the doll house’s portability and easy storage are nice features to retain!