How to Clean a Play Couch (Without Ruining It)

Someone in our house — no names, but they're four and their favorite food is ketchup — found a way to get chocolate pudding into a velcro connector last Tuesday. Not on the cover. Inside the velcro.

If you have a Figgy, you know exactly the mild panic that follows. These things aren't cheap, they live in the middle of your living room, and they get absolutely wrecked on a regular basis. So let's talk about how to actually clean one without shrinking the cover, pilling the microsuede, or turning a manageable mess into a reason to cry at Target.

The Figgy: built to handle whatever they throw at it.

First: What Your Figgy Is Actually Made Of

This matters more than people realize. The Figgy cover is 100% polyester microsuede — which sounds fancy but is basically a tightly woven synthetic fabric that's designed to feel soft, resist some surface moisture, and hold up to a toddler who treats furniture like a crash pad. The foam inside is dense and not meant to get wet. At all.

That's the whole game: clean the cover, protect the foam.

The cover zips off. If you didn't know that, go check right now — there's a zipper along the bottom seam of each piece. The covers are the only thing that should ever touch water in any serious quantity.

Everyday Spills (The Usual Chaos)

For most spills — juice, milk, the inevitable yogurt situation — move fast. Blot, don't rub. Rubbing pushes the mess deeper into the microsuede fibers and you'll spend the next week staring at a ghost stain wondering what went wrong.

A damp cloth and a tiny drop of dish soap (Dawn works well, nothing with bleach) is honestly enough for 80% of what kids throw at these cushions. Dab it, let it sit for thirty seconds, blot it out with a clean damp cloth, then press a dry towel over it to pull out the moisture. Done.

Letting it air dry helps. Don't point a hair dryer at it — heat can mess with the microsuede texture and you'll end up with a weird shiny patch that bothers you forever.

The Big Stuff: Taking the Covers Off and Washing Them

When things escalate — stomach bugs, art projects that left the table, a bottle of red Gatorade — it's machine wash time.

Unzip the cover, shake out any crumbs (there will be crumbs), and throw it in the washing machine on cold, gentle cycle. Use a mild detergent. Skip the fabric softener entirely — it coats the microsuede fibers and changes the texture over time. Not dramatically, but enough that you'll notice.

Then air dry. This is non-negotiable. The dryer, even on low heat, risks shrinking the cover or degrading the zipper enough that it won't zip back smoothly. Just hang it over a chair or a laundry rack overnight. It dries faster than you'd think.

One more thing: wash the covers separately or with other soft items. Washing with jeans or anything with hardware can snag the zipper or pill the fabric surface.

The Velcro Situation

This is the part nobody warns you about. Velcro is incredible for connecting Figgy pieces — genuinely one of the best things about the design — but it is a magnet for lint, pet hair, crumbs, and in our household, a single strand of cooked spaghetti that had been there for an unknown period of time.

To clean velcro connectors:

• Use a stiff-bristle brush (an old toothbrush or a small cleaning brush works great) and brush outward from the center — this pulls the debris out of the hooks instead of pushing it deeper in.
• A piece of tape, pressed and peeled repeatedly, gets lint and hair out surprisingly well.
• For the chocolate-pudding-in-the-velcro situation: let it dry completely first. Trying to clean wet gunk out of velcro is a miserable experience. Once dry, it brushes out much more cleanly.

Don't submerge velcro connectors in water. They'll come back fine, but they take a long time to dry, and damp velcro doesn't grip as well temporarily — which means your fort architecture becomes structurally unsound right when your kid is using it as a launching ramp.

Specific Stain Guide (The One You Actually Need)

Marker: Rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball, dabbed (not rubbed) onto the stain, then blotted with a damp cloth. Test on a hidden spot first, but this works on microsuede without pulling the color.

Crayon: Scrape off as much as you can while it's cold. A plastic card — not a knife — works well. Then a little dish soap, damp cloth, patience.

Sunscreen: This one's annoying. It leaves a greasy residue that repels water. Sprinkle baking soda on it, let it sit for 15 minutes to absorb the oil, brush it off, then treat with dish soap and a damp cloth.

Vomit: You already know what to do. Remove solids, cold water, enzymatic cleaner if you have it (any pet-stain cleaner works on biological stuff), then machine wash the cover. Don't use hot water — it sets protein stains.

Pen/ballpoint: Hand sanitizer. Dab, don't rub. It dissolves ink surprisingly well on microsuede.

Mystery stain (dried, unknown origin): Soak with a tiny bit of OxiClean diluted in water, let it sit for ten minutes, blot out. Works on most organic stains even when they've been there long enough that you've mentally accepted them as part of the furniture.

A Note on Color

If you have a lighter Figgy color — Dune, Sundance, Calamine — stains show more and you'll be cleaning more often. That's just the reality. The deeper colors (Charcoal, Riverrock, Moss) hide day-to-day marks better but show lint more.

Neither is objectively better. Both will get covered in something within 48 hours of delivery.

What Not to Do

Bleach. Please don't. It'll strip the color unevenly and won't actually clean better than soap for most stains. Same with harsh upholstery sprays — the microsuede doesn't need them and some ingredients will leave a residue that attracts more dirt.

Steam cleaners: we've seen mixed results. Light use on the surface is probably fine, but if you're pushing steam into the zipper seams or velcro, you're risking moisture getting to the foam. The covers zip off for a reason — use that feature.

How Often Should You Wash the Covers?

Honestly? Whenever they need it. There's no magic schedule. Some families wash them monthly, some every few months, some only after major incidents. The microsuede holds up well to regular washing as long as you stay away from hot water and the dryer.

What we'd suggest: if the cushions are starting to smell vaguely like a gym bag — even without a visible stain — it's time. That smell is moisture and skin oils trapped in the fabric, and a full wash clears it right up.

The Foam: What Happens If It Gets Wet

Stand it up to dry. Immediately. The Figgy foam is dense, which means it holds water for a long time if it gets soaked — you're talking days of drying in open air. If you lay it flat, the bottom stays damp and you'll eventually have a mold issue. Upright with air circulating on all sides is the move.

Direct sunlight helps if you have it. And if the foam gets genuinely saturated (a flooded basement, an entire bathtub incident), Figgy's customer team is solid — worth reaching out because sometimes replacement covers or foam pieces are the practical answer.

The short version: zip-off covers, cold water, gentle cycle, air dry, brush the velcro, move fast on spills. That's it. Your Figgy is tougher than it looks — it was designed to live in a house with actual children — and a little maintenance goes a long way toward keeping it looking decent through years of forts, obstacle courses, and whatever the four-year-old invents next.