Hasta La Ideas

Reader Emily submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I am having trouble letting go of my old worn out and resewn Pound Puppy stuffed animal that I have been told to cut up and burn due to allergies and asthma. What should I do with it now that I am thirty eight years old?

I think most of us have a favorite item from our childhood that has traveled the years into our adult lives. For me, it’s a small pillow I got when I moved into my big-girl bed. My husband has a stuffed animal that is missing an arm. My cousin has the tattered remains of a blue gingham blanket. These items provided comfort to us when we were scared or lonely or simply needed another guest at our tea parties.

As long as you don’t have a menagerie of these items taking up unnecessary space in your home, I see no harm in keeping your single favorite comfort item from your childhood. However, there are ways to keep the item without upsetting your allergies or asthma.

It’s more expensive then you might expect, but you can send your Pound Puppy to a stuffed animal repair hospital to be cleaned, restuffed, and repaired. Your Pound Puppy will look different, though, when it emerges from the hospital, so only go this route if you’re okay with your stuffed animal looking like new again. (My mother-in-law had my sister-in-law’s favorite doll repaired after some hair loss, and my sister-in-law was so traumatized she never touched the doll again.) Most importantly, after a makeover at the stuffed animal repair hospital, you should be able to keep and snuggle with your comfort item without having an allergic reaction.

If a restoration isn’t for you, I recommend retiring your comfort item to a display box. This way, you can still look at and admire your stuffed animal, but the dander on it will no longer upset your allergies and asthma. Before putting it into the display box, you may want to first have your Pound Puppy cleaned at a stuffed animal repair shop so the mites on the item don’t continue to feast on it. But, in this case, I wouldn’t go for the full-body makeover, just a cleaning.

If displaying your stuffed animal isn’t a priority, you may want to get an archival box to store your item in for the longterm. Again, you’ll likely want to have the item cleaned before going into storage. Once in the archival box, you can place it in a plastic bin to keep other pests from invading your cherished friend.

Clutter is anything that gets in the way of the life you want to live. In this case, I think the mites and dander on the Pound Puppy are the problem, not the Pound Puppy. I also think that if you got rid of the comfort item entirely, you’d likely spend a significant amount of time regretting your decision and having that regret clutter up your thoughts.

Thank you, Emily, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Please check the comment section for even more ideas from our readers.

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