Cleaning non-washable baby soft toys

[42andcounting]

My friend has given me a huge box of really lovely baby toys, a lot of which are soft toys with built in rattles, teethers, squeakers, etc. They've been boxed up in her garage, so although they look clean they do smell a bit musty, but a lot of them say 'sponge clean only' which I'm not sure will completely freshen them up. Do you think it would ruin them if I washed them in the machine on either the handwash, delicates, or coldwash setting?

I would probably hand wash them in a bowl of warm water with some washing powder, then rinse with just water. I do this with delicate tops and scarves

I have at some point chucked ALL of DD's toys in the washing machine on a delicate cycle. They've all come out fine.

I would chuck them in the machine on a hand wash/delicates cycle. I have done so with all my daughter's soft toys & they're fine.

If there are no electronics or battries in them, put them through the wash!

As long as there's no batteries or anything just stick them in the machine thy will be fine. Just not the dryer x

I agree, just wash them. If they survive then great. You couldn't use them anyway if they were manky.

Thanks all, I had a bit of nesting impatience yesterday :) so had already started hand washing them before I read all the 'bung it in the machine' replies. They've all come up like brand new (squeakers & everything still working too) except one, so Mr Giraffe is now bracing himself for a trip round the washing machine!

Just a tip for machine washing - tie them up in a pillow case as that protects things a little from bashing around the machine, but they still get clean. I do this with slippers or trainers, too :)

gerty ..just to say what a great tip :) I usually put trainers/football boots etc in a pillowcase but never thought to tie it! They usually just fall out of the pillowcase and get stray bits of un-noticed grass all over my machine and I think what a pointless task it was to put them in the pillowcase. So I will tie it from now in! thankyou :) x

No problem, I'm far too lazy busy for handwashing :)

Depends how skanky they are. We had a load of stuff from a friend that she'd been storing in the garage, so it smelled of damp and dog. I chucked it all into a mattress protector (because that was what I had lying around) and washed it on a delicates setting, and it's all fine. I wouldn't have given it to my baby without a bloody good wash, so it wasn't as though there was anything to lose by trying.