It's no secret that I am above being a Disney fan. I grew up surrounded by Disney's dazzling stories, admiring its adventurous characters, reading piles upon piles of their books, watching every single one of their endearing movies, cartoons and short films, dressing up in their sumptuously chic clothes, and of course, playing with mountains of their unique toys and decorations. So, no. I'm no Disney fan. I breathe, feel and live Disney. That said, let's go on with the story.
Throughout the years, and since I have memory, my parents indulged my brother and I with all sorts of incredible toys. We were quite careful with our things, so we actually still have most of them and in wonderful conditions. One of my favorites has always been our marvelous plush collection. Consisting of over a hundred stuffed animals in all shapes and sizes (the biggest being a gigantic stuffed teal teddy bear which I won back at a fair in Canada... but that's another story), our collection includes quite a few recognizable Disney characters, as well as other secondary characters who still hold a special place in my heart.
I believe that I've mentioned before that my husband and I moved into an apartment to start a new life. We had the opportunity to furnish and decorate it from scratch, and among some things that we have here, there is a chiffonier with a glass cabinet as the top part. My husband found and brought home this discarded piece of furniture one day, and we put it against a wall right in front of our dining room. It was the perfect piece to display something delicate and cool, so I thought for a while until I remembered that I'd brought a few of my favorite Disney plushies with me, but they'd been sitting inside a bin since we arrived.
I took them out and quickly assembled them inside the cabinet to see how they looked in it. Plus, I threw in a beautiful Pluto plush toy that we had found at a flea market almost for free. It was perfect. We both liked it so much that we decided to have a plush-cleaning session to get them primped and polished to shine inside our up-cycled display window.
We were both absolutely skeptical about throwing the plush toys inside the washing machine and dryer just to see them come out in chunks, especially after carefully reading the labels on all the plushies stating to "Only spot clean". Also, we had already tried the "baking soda method", which I must assess as completely ridiculous because it does not clean your plush; it merely disinfects it. So, after some really unsuccessful Google research and YouTube exploring, we found a video of an Argentinian dad and his daughter who cleaned a teddy bear with a somewhat different spot cleaning method. They would wet a toothbrush with a bit of water and dab it in powdered detergent, brushing the stuffed animal's skin to remove any spots and, in general, to remove all the dirt and dust. They would then repeat the process a couple of times and leave the toy to air dry.
We decided to give that method a shot, so we gathered our supplies and began our task. We definitely broke a sweat doing it: it's fine if you're going to clean one or two plush toys, but if you're up for a whole bunch, you're going to need a lot of elbow grease. I think we grew muscles that day from all the cleaning that we did, especially because we had a few other new plushies from the same flea market as before. In the end, we left them to air dry, and we were overall satisfied with our work and with how the stuffed toys turned out.
A few more months went by, and I realized that I was feeling the need of Disney-fying out our home a bit more. I thought it would be a nice idea to display my other Disney plush toys, as we feel it gives a cute and warm feeling to our home. My mother was kind enough to sort out the toys from our plush box and send them over to me. I was ecstatic to open the boxes and find my old and precious plushies, but at the same time I thought most of them looked really dirty and had old stains. I mean, some of them are almost my age, and I don't think any had been washed in... well... forever.
This was when it hit us: were we supposed to spot clean each and every one of these plush toys? Clearly, that was a feat beyond question, so instead we chose to analyze other options. That's when I remembered that I had talked about our plush-cleaning session to a few people back then, and both my grandmother and my dear friend Dulce had mentioned that they cleaned plushies running a cycle in their washing machines and hanging them to air dry. Hmmmmm... What to do? Decisions, decisions. My husband and I took a vote and decided to dunk a first batch of Disney critters into our washing machine. As we closed the door, I had nothing in my head more than the lyrics of "Not while I'm around" from the musical Sweeney Todd, which says:
Nothing's gonna harm you
Not while I'm around
We ran a regular cycle with the same amount of detergent and fabric softener that we use to wash our clothes. Even after reading the labels and warnings, I felt pretty confident about washing them with this new technique. After all, I had two reliable testimonies that swore by this method. Once the first lot was done and the toys were out of the water ride, I realized it had been a phenomenal decision. Not only were the plushies complete and tear-free; they were also clean as new and soft as they probably had been many, many years ago. I scattered them over an old towel outside, in our small terrace, as I was terrified to hang them from the clothing line and lose them to a relentless breeze (it had been quite a windy week). My husband approved the process and we merrily proceeded to conduct two more groups of stuffed animals into the splash zone.
I am overjoyed to say that there were no casualties in our operation, and that our fluffy Disney family is glowing. I've also decided to rotate the plushie display on the glass cabinet by themes or films, so that all the toys get their share of the dining room's spotlight. We absolutely recommend washing your plush toys in a regular to gentle cycle in your washing machine. However, you should follow these three very important precautions:
2. Some plushies are made with more delicate fabrics than others. If it has any frail materials, or if it's quite old and has begun losing chunks of hair or fiber, do not launder.
3. Red-colored fabrics tend to run and stain other fabrics in the washing machine. If your stuffed animal has a suspicious piece of red fabric, or any other suspicious color for that matter, feel free to conduct a test for color running before dunking it in your machine.
The washing machine method was truly a panacea. I hope this enlightens plushie collectors and parents out there who have faced the same dilemma as us, and that they find peace with this solution.
I've completely lost my blog-posting rhythm nowadays, but if you liked this story stay tuned for more coming up!
