Somebody help me! I'm being eaten by stuffed animals!

I've spent the past two days rearranging the boys' room.

I figured that since, you know, Merritt's eight months old and all, it's probably time to start moving him into his crib. And now that Troy's in his big boy bed, we're all set. All that's left to do is convince the boys they can sleep in the same room and not wake each other up. The way things have been going this past week, I'm thinking it might be a while before that one happens.

But, hey, at least the furniture is set up nice and purty, and the pictures are hung on the walls.

Okay, well, the pictures are on the walls, but there's a few I'm thinking I'm going to have to move around. Because I'm nice and decisive like that. For once, I can actually be thankful the walls in this house were painted an ultra-chalky uber-white flat paint before we moved in. Spackle works wonders when there's no paint color to worry about.

And get this! I even hung a wall shelf--by myself! This is a great accomplishment, given that the last time I made such an attempt, the right side was about a half in lower than the left. John came home, looked at the shelf, smiled at me, and proceeded to do what he told me I should have done in the first place... get out the tape measure and the level thingie.

Eh, eyeballin' it works just fine.

(As evidenced by the fact that the shelf I hung yesterday required no tape measure, no level and is perfectly even. I even checked it using the highly scientific method of grabbing the nearest toy ball, setting it in the middle of the shelf and taking note of whether or not it rolled off to one side or the other. The smarts, they astound me daily.)

But anyway.

Now that the room is put together (unless you count the pictures I'm going to have to rehang in new locations), I have a whole new problem.

WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THE BUCKET LOADS OF TOYS!!!

We have a little cubby/shelf thing in the room that houses most of the toys, being that I'm not a fan of the broken toy syndrome that seems to accompany toy boxes, and a small toy area down stairs, so there's a stash in both places. The idea was that, this way, all the toys would be contained.

Ha. Well. Then there was Christmas. And then there was a birthday.

Now we're overflowing again.

The truth of the matter is that the toy issue doesn't bother be nearly as much as another issue I'm facing. With the toys, I have a plastic tub in the garage into which--theoretically--I can rotate out half the toys, thus keeping things "new" every month or so. Of course, that would require actually DOING said rotating, instead of letting all the toys accumulate.

But the OTHER issue is this: The Stuffed Animals.

Now, you must understand. The boys have approximately 9,876 stuffed animals. Or, you know, somewhere around there. And Troy adores every. single. one. By the time he reached two years old, he'd named most of them, like "Dog" the white sea lion from Sea World, and "Hoppy" the purple bunny whom he thinks comes from Bunnytown. Then there's Snoopy, and Eeyore, and a stuffed Mater... and 5000 others. He loves them all and they are his friends.

But they are invading every square inch of my house. To be quite honest, there are a few I could probably add to the garage sale pile and he'd never know the difference, but most of them would be sorely and sadly missed. The stuffed animal thing is a highly sensitive issue around here.

So what do I do with them? What would YOU do with 9,876 stuffed animals?

The option my husband keeps suggesting is something I'm not entirely a fan of--the stuffed animal wall hanger thing hanging high in the corner. I've seen them in stores and such, so I'm sure they are still great and people use them all the time, but for some reason, to me, that just screams 1989.

But I'm still at a loss to figure out what to do with this pile of stuffed animals currently sitting outside the boys' bedroom door, waiting for me to find them a home.

Ideas? Tricks for vacuum packing them and storing them in closets? Or hiding them somewhere where they'll never again be found?

Oh, and suggestions on how to avoid ever again having another toy or stuffed Nemo darken the doors of this house would be welcome, too. Although somehow I don't think that would go over too well with the grandparents...