Every night, a mysterious phenomenon takes over my household. My husband and I are yawning, desperate to get through our daughters’ bedtime routine so that we can collapse onto the couch. The kids are clearly tired too. But just as we begin filling up the bathtub, they start bouncing off the walls—sometimes literally. The sound of that faucet kicks off a frenzied half hour of dancing, wrestling, spinning, sliding, and running.
Instagram might call it sensory-seeking behavior. Grandpa might call it horseplay. Whatever it is, I eventually realized that these antics are not riling my kids up; they’re calming them down so that they can fall asleep. If it were summer, we might send them outside to run laps around the yard. But it is winter, and zero degrees outside. My husband and I could lie down on the floor, resigned to become human trampolines for their little 2- and 4-year-old feet, or we can ask the question that focuses all the horseplay into a fun, safe shake-your-sillies-out-please-don’t-destroy-the-house-palooza: “Should we go build something with the Nugget?”
The Nugget is the embodiment of the childhood urge to take all the cushions off the couch and build a fort. It’s also a foam sofa that sits on the floor; a thin, squishy cushion and a thick, harder cushion make up the base, and two triangular cushions can serve as a backrest. But the base cushions fold in half so they’re easy to stack or stand on end, and you can mix them up to build a house, a slide, or whatever else you can think of. (If you’re craving even more shapes for building, the company also makes a circular ottoman called the Chunk, but my family hasn’t tried it.)
This rugged modular couch comes in more than a dozen colors and patterns and adapts to a child’s mobility, from baby-crawling through teenage-lounging.
The Nugget comes with washable covers in fun colors, so when a mess happens—and it inevitably will, trust me—you can zip off the cover and throw it in the wash. We got our first Nugget just over three years ago, and the second and third a year ago, all in the basic microsuede material. The covers, zippers, and foam all still look new, even after we’ve repeatedly gone through the frustratingly finicky process of shoving the foam cushions back into the covers post-washing (note that the covers should be air-dried to prevent shrinking). At least five other Wirecutter families own a Nugget, and we recommend it as a fun and functional gift for families.
Like cats, the socially acceptable number of Nuggets to own hovers somewhere around two. That said, we have three Nuggets, all of which live stacked up in my younger daughter’s room, awaiting their next metamorphosis. “That’s a lot of Nuggets,” our friends say, until they watch their own child start jumping on the cushions and realize that three is exactly the right number of foam kids sofas to own.
The company offers a handy page of build ideas, but over the past three years we’ve developed our own favorites. There’s “the mansion,” which is a large fort with a gated hallway and garage. “The dock” is a long, stairstepped tower next to a soft landing pad. My 6- and 8-year-old nephews like to terrify everyone by stacking the cushions halfway to the ceiling, climbing on top, and then tipping the whole thing over. Other Wirecutter families also report elaborate forts, as well as obstacle courses.
The Nugget costs $250, more if you choose to upgrade the fabric or add a waterproof lining. Bundling a Nugget and a Chunk is the only way to get a discount. Although $250 may sound like a lot for a few slabs of foam, it made sense for my family once we considered how many types of toys and baby gear the Nugget replaces.
Both of my kids clambered up the cushions when they were learning how to climb and cruised along its edges while learning to walk. Sometimes we turn the Nuggets into a restaurant booth and take turns making one another pretend meals, or we stack the cushions up into a stage, complete with triangular foam speakers. It can also be a train table, a Skee-Ball alley, a slide, or a climbing wall. When we’re all trapped inside on an especially brutal winter day, it’s the first place we go to keep the cabin fever at bay.
At the end of the night, when the kids have finally had their bath and are all cozied up in their pajamas, the Nugget transforms back into a couch (or, if you have three, a sectional) for the four of us to sit on while we read a few books together. And when a little voice calls out in the wee hours of the morning, and one of our daughters just needs my husband or me close by, we put the Nugget out on the floor. Then we lie down and reach out to hold their hand as they drift back to sleep.
This article was edited by Amy Miller Kravetz and Kalee Thompson.
