MotherSoup

If you’re a mother with younger children, then there’s a phrase which makes your heart sink. Its:

SURFACE WASHABLE ONLY

I’m rather of the opinion that if a soft toy cannot be washed then it’s been over-engineered.

OK if it’s got some electronic component, then it’s not going to be happy in the washine machine - mind you, some of those noisy toys deserve dunking in a bucket.

But your average stuffed or beany toy, designed for little kids, needs to washable. Yuk - it’s just not hygienic otherwise: they’ll drag it around the floor, it’ll gather dust for a few months, then they’ll chew it.

Besides - any toy which can’t cope with a dunk in soapy water isn’t going to cope with the vissicitudes of small children, is it? And I doubted it would start to emit dangerous toxins just because I’d washed it. Couldn’t be any more dangerous than letting my children cuddle years of accumulated filth…

So this morning, with them all busy getting educated or otherwise amused, I pounced on  those toys whose labels forbade washing. I figured if they exploded messily as a result, I could hide the evidence before the Offspring noticed.

There was enough to fill the bath, even before I added water and a good squirt of something germicidal. Within moments the water had dirtied until it was the colour (and almost the consistency) of mushroom soup. I felt like such a Bad Mother.

Dog Soup (with a dash of cat, penguin and bunny) soon became even more gruesome, as I laid the drippy animals across a horizontal drying rack. They looked for all the world like a barbecue. But by the time the Offspring caught sight of the cuddlies, they were hanging innocently from clothes-pegs by their various appendages.

None of them seem to have exploded messily. So much for manufacturer’s guidance.