We bought a new Couch 5 years ago and made the smart decision to pick a cream couch. It was just the two of us and we weren’t sure if we will be lucky to have kids so we decided to YOLO it.
Fast forward to now with an active child and we have a still good couch with dark cream coloured couch seats that is a struggle to clean out, especially the two pee patches that drives me nuts. It was after the couch turned this way that I understood why we got such a heavy discount for it. The couch is from a popular high end brand in Germany and post discount we paid €950. Well five years ago, I was not on my workoptional journey and if this was then I will just replace the couch.
In the past 2 years, I’ve expended a lot of effort and money on trying to get the couch clean. I watched so many YouTube videos, bought cleaning products and followed the instructions only to get a minimally better couch. I even bought a Bissell cleaner and all I will say on that is “the marketing is great”.
Two weeks ago we went on a playdate at a friend’s and they have a light grey couch that looks clean despite having two kids. I asked how they keep the couch clean and was informed they pop the couch seat covers in the washing machine every month. I was like yeah, I tried to do that but our covers got stained. And it was at this point that it finally clicked for me. Our couch seat covers were lined wrongly, it was a production fail and that’s why we got such a high discount off it. My friend’s couch is light grey and the seat covers had a light grey under lining while ours is cream with a black under lining that bleeds. At this point, I knew what I had to do to fix the issue.
I ordered white cotton fabric from Amazon and got my sewing machine out of the basement. The sewing machine still works good so it was a week of taking out and replacing the black lining with the white cotton fabric. I was finally able to wash the covers with no fear of additional stains.
Voila, we have our couch with an almost new look and we will be rocking it for many more years. My Husband grudgingly agreed I did a great job given his preference was to buy a new couch. The couch is still very good and will not be getting replaced any time soon. I wonder what is the average couch life as I probably need to start a sinking fund to match that timing to avoid a surprise buy in future.
It is nice to see how a skill I learnt just for the sake of learning is now saving me money.