Goodbye Couch

I think on some level people get a little attached to things. And by things, I mean inanimate objects that are in no way alive, but have borne passive witness to our lives. The people on Hoarders obviously experience this, about everything that comes their way, but I think most people can feel a little sentimental about select stuff in their life. For instance, my mother's hutch is in the living room and I love it. I've had it with me for years and it will never leave my side.

I also have a vanity desk in the bedroom, which has become cumbersome and is better suited to a teenager than a 30-year-old woman. But it was the last thing my mom gave me before she died because she "always wanted one" herself. So try to make me sell it. It's missing a handle and the mirror is shaky and perhaps permanently forced in place after too many moves of hammering it out and then hammering it in. But it stays, impractical as it may be.

We recently bought a new couch from the Brick during their Boxing Week sale and thus had to arrange to get rid of our previous couch. It was a handy piece of work, actually. It was detachable for one, making it easier to move, and it had an attached ottoman which opened up for storage. Underneath the couch was a sliding shelf that opened into a double bed. The bed was wildly uncomfortable, but it got used all the same, though I lost sleep along with whoever was unfortunate enough to spend the night on that thing, worrying about their inevitable stiff back.

It was great for the giant living room we had upstairs, but down here, not so much. It sort of takes over. And with a baby coming and an influx of stuff, the Dude convinced me we needed to replace it with something less boat-like.

So this little number is being delivered today:

Isn't it pretty?

It's a little greyer in person and I think it'll be smashing against our red walls. It's also microsuade, or some equivalent, that's supposedly easy to clean. Our previous couch was fibrous and thus not so good in that category. This is more baby-friendly.

I'm very jazzed about it, though actually making the purchase was a pain in the ass because the salesman was Pushy McBadListener. He followed us around the whole store giving us the same flyer and telling us he was "right over there" if we needed him, only giving us a few minutes at a time to look on our own.

When we settled on what we wanted he kept trying to encourage us to buy more.

"We don't need anything else."
"We have love seat, ottoman, chairs..."
"We have no more room in our home for other furniture."
"Oh, okay. But in case you want to buy anything else, coffee table--"
"No, no, just the couch, please."
"Okay, let me set up your account with us. Have you got everything you want? There's a matching set for the couch."
"No, nothing else. We have no space. We can afford one thing. We're getting only the couch."
"Oh, okay. Alright, you're set up, but until the date of delivery, you can add more to your purchase for no extra delivery charge. Would you like to keep looking around?"
"Dude, anything else we buy would go in the backyard. There's no room. Just. The. Couch. Please."

To make room for just the couch we had to send off our previous one to a new home. We settled on the Furniture Bank, a charity that places used furniture with households in need. We emptied and cleaned the couch, only three years old, and some men came yesterday and hauled it off. It's going to be evaluated and I'll be sent a charity donation receipt for its determined value.

I felt a little bummed out watching it go. I'm not sure why either. I bought it only because it detached. The stairwell upstairs won't accept a full-sized couch. It wasn't as comfy as I wanted, it was never my style either. I mean, it was nice but not really something I'd have chosen normally. But as I saw it go, I felt slightly nostalgic. Perhaps it's the pregnancy hormones. Or maybe I was just lamenting the loss of living room storage.

At least it wasn't thrown away. It's going somewhere it'll be of use to people who need it. And my home is opening up more and becoming a wee bit more pretty.