The Easiest Toy To Purge Is The Hardest To Let Go Of

Like most parents of multiple children, I have a love-hate relationship with stuffed animals. They multiply. They take up space. And if you’re trying to live any kind of clutter-free existence, their rotund, fluffy bodies are especially irritating. We’ve tried every storage solution there is: nets strung across bedroom corners, cages, baskets, barrels, and bins. Occasionally the solution is a quick trip to the trash can after everyone’s in bed. But no matter what we do, the stuffies win, poking out of every corner and crowding the kids’ beds until there’s barely room to sleep.

Our current system, not great but not terrible, is one standard laundry bin of stuffies per room. Any little friend who doesn’t fit must find a new home, and to bring a new stuffy in, an old one has to go.

That’s the stated rule, anyway. In practice it’s more of a suggestion. The purged friends always find their way back to the gap between the bed and the wall. (Seriously, how does anyone sleep with that crowd?) My three daughters also share a beanbag designed to be filled with stuffed animals, which promises to solve two problems at once and instead creates a new one. It isn’t soft and even. It’s a lumpy mess, full of odd corners and hard plastic eyeballs. Whose idea was this? Do they hate sitting comfortably? And how often do the toys buried inside ever come out to play?

And yet, for all my complaints, I keep making room. It comes down to childhood innocence.

I’m not nearly as strict about screen time as I should be, and my older kids own more tech products than I’m proud to admit. So when they ask for something as simple as a stuffed animal, I can’t bring myself to say no. A stuffy is a chance to unplug completely. It’s a small reminder of a childhood that’s going by too fast.

My 12-year-old is on the edge of teenagedom, and it shows. She FaceTimes friends while doing her makeup, and she has started stealing my clothes. Her Christmas list includes an Apple Watch and mascara. But when she flipped through the Amazon toy catalog, she stopped at the adorably awkward Gund Toothpick bear and added him too. My mama heart said yes before she’d finished asking. She still believes in Santa (as far as I know). She still hugs her beloved stuffed moose, Gruffy, every night. She’s so big and yet so young.

It reminds me of a stuffed lion I begged my mother for when I was a little too old for stuffed anything. I remember following her around the store, clutching that oversized, vaguely realistic lion, promising through tears that he’d be the very last stuffy I’d ever want or need. She caved. I’m not sure I kept my promise. But the lion became a fixture in our house, a stoic companion who sat on the couch for years until his fur wore off and his leg came loose. Recently, my younger sister sheepishly admitted she’d overpaid for the exact same lion on eBay because she missed him.

That’s the thing about stuffies. Maybe we only treat them like people because they have faces. So what? Some of them become family.

Take Big Teddy. Several years ago, on our annual beach trip, a stranger at our condo complex offered us one of those 5-foot teddy bears he’d won on the boardwalk. We were frantically loading the car before checkout time. Of course we said yes. Big Teddy has since joined countless family outings and even earned a theme song: Ram Jam’s “Black Betty,” with his name swapped in.

This summer, as my husband and I tried to fit five kids, one dog, two adults, and a week of clothes and groceries into an average-sized minivan, the kids asked if Big Teddy could come along too. We laughed and said absolutely not. Three hours later we pulled out of the driveway with Big Teddy stretched across their laps, headed back to his hometown.

Stuffies in our house wear a lot of hats: decoration, bedtime companion, regular guest at tea parties. They fill the shelves, the bins, and the corners of our home and our hearts. When I try to purge, which is often, my oldest can recite the provenance of every single one with alarming precision. To her, none of them are candidates for donation. They are the friends who echo the memories of her youth.

My son is 10 and in his own metamorphosis into a bona fide big kid. He used to refuse to sleep without his beloved rabbit and bear. Now I’m more likely to find them both kicked to the floor, forgotten, no matter how many times I carefully place them back next to his pillow in the morning. Last summer we held a charity yard sale, and to my delight someone donated a larger version of that same rabbit, in pristine condition. I tucked it into his bed. He didn’t seem too into it. I left it there anyway, and he hasn’t complained.

Stuffies ask kids to use their imagination. No batteries, no screens, no buttons. They become whoever you need them to be.

As the kids grow, I’ve been decluttering in earnest, selling their former favorites on Vinted and beyond. In theory, stuffed animals should be the easiest thing to purge. In practice, they’re the one thing I can’t quite let go of.

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