You don't know the power of Styrofoam!

(that is right, don't die, or pass out in shock- this is two posts in as many days! Weird, I know!)

"Are you MAD?
You don't know the power of Styrofoam!"
-Bolt

WE have a problem. It is certainly a problem that many of you have, or have had, as well. We have too many stuffed animals. I swear that we get rid of some every time we clean the kids rooms....and I double swear that I don't buy any new ones...

WHERE IN THE FREAK ARE ALL THESE STUFFED TOYS COMING FROM?

[breathing erradically w/wild crazy eyes]

I am not kidding, do they multiply like rabbits? Has some evil warlock put a curse on all mothers by infecting stuffed toys with some kind of multiplying hex? *sigh* this pic is only of the ones in the girls room...not counting the ones on the shelves of thier bunkbeds, or in bed with them, or the HUGE bucket in Sam's closet! Yeeks!
[strangling noises]

Give me a sec....OK....I have control again....sortof.

Anyhoo, I once heard a great idea for storing these minions of the devil...oh, um...I mean the stuffed toys that the kids DON'T want to get rid of (not that it would matter anyway... EVIL MAGICAL CURSE! ) I read that a great storage technique was to use an empty beanbag to store them in, so the toys are the padding for the chair, and when the kids want to play with them...PRESTO! unzip and there they are! Kinda cool and multi purpose, don'tcha think?

I have pondered this organizational tip several times, but never acted on it. Just yesterday the girls room was perfectly clean [contented sigh] except the stuffed animals that had taken up residence in thier beds were now all piled up in the corner of the room (see above pic)...I decided that NOW was the time to act! We already have two kid-sized bean bags...no room for more, or money to spend on more un-needed beanbags...so I figured: How hard can it be to empty & wash two red beanbags then restuff with toys? I will let this picture tell my tale:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words...well this one is worth about 385,716 pea-sized styrofoam balls............ ;(

Explanation:

I got the itch to do this awesome reorganizational feat and proceeded to get out the beanbags and start to try to empty the first one into a garbage bag...the above pic was what happened after only emptying it halfway!!! My BIG mistake, aside from trying to fill the stupid bags without any help (dumb), was trying to do this when my two youngest were awake and in the same room with me! DUH!! Sam and Izzy "helped" me so much that it took about 15 full vacuum canisters of styrofoam balls and what seemed like forever crawling around on the floor vacuuming under every piece of furniture downstairs to clean the mess up. Sam was even good enough to run through the kitchen, over by the computer, and down the hall to the bathroom for me...while covered in static-electricity-charged-&-flying styrofoam balls.

Sam and Izzy did have a BLAST playing in the mess, Izzy first had to determine if they were edible, and luckily she found them yucky- Sam pretty much treated it like snow, I swear he was trying to make an angel on the carpet! :D So funny! Remember like I said before- these pics are only after the first 1/2 of one beanbag was emptied (well only the part I didn't get in the garbage bag is on the floor) imagine this mess multiplied by about 5 or 6 times, then imagine that Sam decided to EMPTY about half of one of the FULL garbage bags of balls I had put on the couch. Wow....it was QUITE a night! :D I wish I had gotten a pic of the REALLY big mess!

Here are just three of the bags of styrofoam that I dumped out or cleaned up, this is NOT including the FULL Kitchen garbage can that I dumped the vacuum canister into umpteen times...ugh.

I did manage to have one mental inspiration though, I thought to wipe down my hands and the outside of the beanbags with Dryer sheets to 'uncling' the little devils...worked SUH-WEET! :D So maybe my brain isn't totally missing...maybe. Although I did find some satisfaction to vacuuming Izzy and Sam...yep, you read correctly, I vacuumed my kids...and they LIKED it!!! LOL ;)