DIY Under-the-Sofa Toy Blocker

If you're a parent, a nanny, a grandparent...or maybe even a pet "parent", you can benefit from this!

Ever since we've had toys in the house, we've had the problem of them getting lost deep underneath the sofa. I would have to near break my back to reach them and it was happening constantly! It seemed even worse at our last place where we had wood flooring. They just had a tendency to roll so far back!

I decided I had to come up with a solution. Clearly, taking the toys out of the room was not an option, so I started thinking of ways I could block them from getting underneath the sofa. At first, I thought I could sew a long tube of fabric and fill it with rice (kind of like a door-stopper), but I felt like there must be an easier way.

Then, a pool noodle came to mind. But, they're solid foam (may be hard to cut or manuevre), and more difficult to find in various sizes...and I think the most obvious problem is that they are bright colors, which would not camouflage well for this purpose.

Then, my many visits to Home Depot popped into my head, and I thought I remembered them having something there that would work. Sure enough, they did!

It's foam pipe insulation (from the plumbing section) and it's the perfect dark gray color that won't show underneath your sofa! Here's the one I bought. I believe it was 6 feet long which was just about the right length for my longest sofa.

Measure the length of your sofa, as well as the distance between the sofa and the floor, so you know what size foam to buy before you go to the store. If the foam offered is too long, you can easily cut it to size with a pair of scissors, so don't worry about that.

A sweet employee at Home Depot asked if he could help me find what I was looking for, and when I told him I had found it, but was just deciding on the size I needed, he asked me what I was using it for. I just laughed and said "not it's intended purpose!". 

It comes in a few different sizes, and these were $1.28 each. I ended up needing 4 total. Two for the sofa and two for the love seat. One on its own was just a little too skinny to wedge perfectly underneath, so I put one inside the other to make it a little thicker. You can just pop open the pre-cut line and put one tube inside the other.

This created the perfect thickness to wedge underneath my sofa. I just pushed it under a couple of inches so it wasn't sticking out in an obvious way.

You can't even tell it's there, thanks to the dark color!

I'm seriously so excited about this solution! I hope you will try it too if you have the same problem of toys hiding under your sofa!

I'm linking up with Sew Many Ways, Sew Darn Crafty Linky Party