I am concerned that my children are stuffed animal hoarders. No, really! Are other homes like this?! What is with all the stuffed animals!?!?
We have so many stuffed animals in our home, that I lost count looooooong ago. One would think that my children had NO other toys, from the copious amounts of stuffed bears, dogs, sea creatures, and other varied menagerie you might find in the rooms of our house. Strike that. It’s almost like we have a stuffed animal for every species out there. It’s like they never asked for a single other gift in their lives. They are crawling out of the closets, could never be contained by enough baskets, and are taking over every single child’s bed in our house!
There appears to be NO end in sight! We go on a family vacation and offer for each of our children to pick a souvenir. What do they choose? A stuffed animal! They have a birthday party. What do their friends get them as a present, or as an accoutrement to the gift? Stuffed animals! (No offense to those of you who have done this, because you know my kids LOVE them!) Our family goes to the local pizza joint for an end of season basketball party…what do the kids so miraculously win from the claw machine?! A stuffed animal!
They get holiday-specific ones from Grandparents for each holiday, talking ones from Build-a-Bear birthday parties, and even dancing ones (yes, we had one of these!).
Each of these precious treasures finds its way into our home, and I am concerned. Not concerned at the mere amount of stuffed animals that we house within the walls of our home, but at my kids’ inability to let even a single one of these precious animals ever leave. Heck, we even have stuffed animals from my childhood that my mom passed down to my kids that they cannot part with! This is a multi-generational problem here!
very time I attempt a stuffed animal purge, my children insist that each of these creatures brings back specific memories. I’m a sentimental person, so this resonates with me a bit. But, really – do we specifically need to hold on to the memory of the time when we threw the baseball through the hole at the Alameda County fair and won a small lizard-shaped stuffed animal? Or the time when we bought a 20-year-old wolf beanie-boo at the neighbor’s garage sale? My children claim that each of these animals holds a special place in their hearts, which means that as long as they have a say, they are never, ever going anywhere.
I’m pretty sure my children are not the only children who have an obsession with stuffed animals. I have seen hordes of their seemingly-like-minded friends carry around these same creatures. They’re hanging from their backpacks, taking them to each others’ houses for slumber parties, and bringing them in for show and tell. They are everywhere!
The rational parent in me sees this as an epidemic of unnecessary clutter that has spiraled out of control. But the nostalgic in me sees giggling, happy children surrounding themselves with cozy, plush reminders of their innocence. Someday, likely without warning, the innocence will wane and the significance of all but the most cherished of these reminders will fade. When that day comes, I’ll have to make the difficult decision of which stuffed treasures to pass on to a new life with other children, and which will make their way into hibernation, to return a couple decades later to plague the homes of my children with a clutter epidemic of their own.
