Sofa-king excited, or ode to couches I have known

Tomorrow, our new couch is being gt delivered. On a scale of 1 to 10 gauging my excitement, this is an 11. It’s a gorgeous, roomy, heavily-upholstered cream color with badass rivets decorating the edges. I am not usually a fan of lighter-colored furniture; I have always admired the effect but then I’d shake my head, thinking, “Kids.” Kids have factored into most decisions I have made about everything since I was 20 years old.

Not the exact couch, but similar, and oooooh I can’t wait to Netflix and chill.

“This carpet is pretty, but will it clean easily?”

“These plates are awesome; too bad they’re glass.”

“I really love this white, cable-knit sweater, but it’ll just get stained. Does it come in brown?”

“I know these tampons SAY super-absorbent, but are they, really? I don’t have time to run into the bathroom once an hour.”

“Nice car, but we’d need two just to transport everyone.”

For decades, our furniture has always been dark, or darkly patterned, and always Scotch Guarded to an almost toxic level. When my children were small, we were given sets of furniture that older family members gifted us because they were A) old and B) they didn’t have kids so they could afford new furniture every 3 years or so. It was the perfect trade-off for them: Uncle Joe wanted a new truck, so the deal was that Aunt Edna got new furniture. Then, they would gift barely-used furniture sets to their poor relatives, who didn’t care that there were scenes of country water mills or patterns of cabbage roses on them; they were in almost-new condition and they were free. Also, there were no puke stains that you couldn’t see but knew were there or chocolate stains or koolaid stains that had sunk into the foam, rendering it a sickly pink.

Let’s not forget the sets of furniture that were so popular in the late 80s and early 90s: heavy, wooden frames with removable cushions. Those bastards were heavy and dangerous if you had kids, because someone was always smacking their head against one of those arm rests that no one could possibly rest against, because they were shellacked instruments of torture. NO ONE was comfortable on these sadistic pieces of furniture, but every young couple had at least one set because they had older relatives who gave them away when Aunt Edna decided she needed to redecorate with a softer, less lethal, pastel theme.

Everyone of a certain age owned this set. Admit it.

One exception I made was the time I caved to impulse and bought red furniture. It was so pretty, so modern, and our living room looked like something out of a magazine.

For about a day.

With a 4 year-old in the house, I should have looked longingly at this set in the store and then moved on to the brown, tweed, stain-proofed set that I am positive everyone’s grandparents probably still own to this day. That red furniture was a massive error that ended up being replaced within two years. By brown, leather furniture. When THAT set needed to be replaced, we settled on brown tweed, because there was now a 7 year-old and a toddler.

It’s been about 5 years since I bought any new furniture. We have an old, brown, microsuede couch bought at the height of spill ages when our grandsons still resided with us, and a monstrous, dark red, leather couch that was purchased secondhand and which needed to be carried in by three grown men because it weighs more than a full-grown hippopotamus. It is a stainproof behemoth, impermeable to almost anything except for a black lab teenager’s paws. Our gregarious, 9 month-old Isla has a habit of doing her zoomies and including this couch in her mad dashes, and she has scored one cushion. I turned it over so no harm, no foul, but I know it’s there and my OCD cannot handle that. This couch is also extremely uncomfortable and slippery.

We’re going to “give” the red couch to the animals, moving it out into the large, empty dining area we have that is empty because we don’t need a dining room table. I am designing a kitchen nook area that will do for our needs just fine, and our meals are so jacked-up and random due to the husband’s work schedule that I’m not going to lie: who needs a table when you’ve got couches? Dinner tastes better with Netflix. Netflix and chill? How about Netflix and eat?

The brown couch will stay a little longer while I decide exactly what model of accent chair I want to go with my new, cream-colored couch. Decisions, decisions! Maybe I’ll get a set of two, or maybe it will be a recliner, or maybe I will get a papasan chair. I bought a new area rug that is still in the shipping box six months ago in anticipation of new furniture, but I just never seemed to find time to get inspired. Plus, Summer was too hot to think about moving furniture around. I much preferred laying on my old couch, prone, like an exhausted, overwrought dishrag.

The point is, there will still be Scotch Guard

and plush throws, and I will still have to vacuum the crap out of the new furniture and brush the cat hair off, and those corner guards for the backs will be attached in case someone gets the idea that they need to sharpen claws and I will be yelling and shooing them until they get a clue, but it will be, at last, something I could choose without a care in the world because the nest is empty. Now, my kids are making their furniture purchases based on color, durability, and “will this hide the koolaid stain?”

The nest is empty.

I can finally say that without tears in my eyes.