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When bedtime arrives, is there room for your child in the bed? Is she slowly being crowded out by an ever-growing mob of stuffed animals? If so, perhaps it’s time to reclaim the bed for your child. But how do you wrangle all those stuffed animals? They need to be near at hand and easy to sort through so that particular stuffed animal will be easy to find, but safely corralled when not in play.  Like so many questions, a visit to the internet reveals many possible answers. Here are a few of our favorites.

A classic solution for stuffed animal storage is an old fashioned, wicker oval laundry or log basket. The wide top makes search and sorting easy and it’s a handy size to carry from room to room for a stuffed animal round up at the end of the day.

A designated bookcase shelf or a wall-mounted shelf for the exclusive use of stuffed animals makes it easy to find a chosen animal. In a home where the stuffed animal population has reached critical mass, you might consider running a single shelf around the upper walls of the child’s room. The animals can be displayed on the shelves and pulled down when called for and their place taken by a stuffed animal in need of a rest.

We like hammocks, and so do stuffed animals! A toy hammock hung in the corner of a child’s room makes an excellent place to store stuffed animals so they’re off the bed and the floor, but still in view. The critters can keep an eye on the fun while enjoying some well-deserved R&R from the hurly-burly life of a toy. Be careful to hang the hammock at a height where little arms can reach all the way to back so they can retrieve their favorites.

Surprisingly, some of the best stuffed animal storage ideas are borrowed from items used for storing shoes. An old fashioned back-of-the-door, pocketed shoe organizer can serve as home for 20 or more small and medium sized stuffed animals. Another possibility is a hanging shoe organizer for the closet which can hold larger animals.  And for hand puppets, repurpose a shoe tree!

So if it’s time for a stuffed animal intervention at your home, you might let your child choose the top three current favorites and store the rest. By keeping them within sight, ready for taking their turn in the spotlight of your child’s love and devotion, you can reduce the free-range stuffed animal chaos and give your child full access to their own bed and a good night’s sleep.

Do you need ideas for cleaning those favorite stuffed animas? We've got you covered! 

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