Just an update; I did indeed buy another, and passed them onto the nieces. The youngest was thrilled, but the older was lukewarm. She's approaching tween territory, and is beginning to get very conscious of her age. Squishmallows are still acceptable for the time being, but I suspect that their days are limited.I saw these at the supermarket and decided to buy one instead of junk food. I'm not overly impressed with its looks, but it's filled with heavy beads that crunch together very pleasantly when I squeeze it. It's more of a fidget toy than a soft toy, which is nice. I will probably pass it onto a niece at some point.
Some teens will get rid of them. Others, like posters here, will keep them for a keepsake.
Genuinely, thank you. No one's actually taught me how to do this before and it means a lot to now know this. Before, my mom just taught me to put stuffed animals into the wash and I think the dryer (might be misremembering), but since these mean a lot to me, it has always made me nervous about washing them. Thank you again, I'll make sure to do this. Last I checked they were dry but they had a weird rain smell and the fur felt weird on them (I'm more sensitive to things like that). It made me worry since they were in the container for 24 hours give or take before I opened it and realized they were wet. I'm not really sure how wet, but it was only a few things that wet since the lid of the container was broken, in case the info is needed.
You can get laundry sanitiser liquid in the supermarket; it goes where you would put softener in the machine, but it doesn’t have all the waxy crap softeners have, it just removes odour and adds fragrance. I used it when a mouse got in my shark cupboard and I had to wash the entire horde. They feel and smell great now though.
If you can do this without trashing it, this is very important. The inners just won't dry properly and you'll end up with mold forming that you can't see but are breathing in anyway. Not good. If it can be disassembled, do it. If it can't, see if you can find a way of forcing air through it to wick the moisture away. A hair dryer on cold can potentially be used for this, as long as you are careful.
Can't go wrong with an Aurora, they're adorable and have tons of animals. The first one I saw when I opened their site was a platypus thatsde me squee irl!
I got mine from a wallmart it came with a DVD, though the photo of the plush I used was from eBay.
I know this post is from a month ago, I hope the cleaning process went well for you. I've helped a couple of friends wash or otherwise restore stuffed animals over the years. For the stuffing aspect, a lot of plush toys have what's called a "final seam" on them somewhere. The majority of the stitching on most plushes is pretty uniform, but there will be a spot somewhere on it (usually on the belly, base, or underside) where the stitching will look a little more erratic, or be done in something like a plastic-ish twine. This is because all but a little bit of the stitching is done by a machine and a little pocket is left so the thing that dispenses the actual stuffing can be put inside the toy and the filling pumped inside. The process of making a toy at Build-A-Bear is a pretty good example of this.
He survived the washing machine. He's drying now.
