Things I Learned From My Couch

This time last year, I purchased a couch from the internet for the third time in my life, firmly operating from the “third time lucky” perspective. It arrived with two men who told me it was too big for the doorway.

I suggested we unbox it outside because it was definitely the box that was making it too big. One of the men told me they couldn’t take it back if I damaged the box.

“You’re not taking that back,” I told them. “It’s coming inside.”

And it did.

“It’s not going down that hallway,” one of them said. Yes, it is. Just push it.

So close.

The two men looked back and forth at each other and then at me. Bitch, this couch is too big for your house, give up. They didn’t have to say it.

“It’s going in this room,” I said. “Let’s try standing it up.”

“We’re not pushing it through that door. It will take the doorframe off.”

I grabbed the top of the couch and pulled it towards me. They weren’t going to take it back, and I wasn’t about to have a couch left wedged between my living room and stairs.

Success. Doorframe intact.

Nothing is impossible. Massive things can fit through tiny spaces. I already knew this from the loose mouse that went under the 1 mm space under the door and out of the animal room in my former workplace. A blind mouse, at that. Took forever to find it.

Now the couch was in the room and I knew how heavy it was from wrangling it in there, I didn’t feel like putting the legs on it. (When I say heavy, I mean this couch feels like it has two elephants inside it.) So I placed it directly onto the carpet and threw the legs in a drawer.

It didn’t need the legs. It looked nice.

It felt like sitting on one of those bus shelter seats that seem like they’re designed to push you off them. Awkward angle. Cushions fall off. Uncomfortable. Badly designed.

Over the past year, every time I have sat on this couch, I’ve thought about replacing it, usually opting to sit on one of the armchairs instead because those don’t hurt my back. The only thing that’s stopped me replacing this oversized green velvet ornament is the thought of getting it back out of the room. What goes up must come down, but what goes in does not necessarily come out. There’s a magnetic stirrer lodged down the pipes of an Indianapolis lab sink to prove that (which went down there approximately 20 seconds after I told someone else to stop pouring the stirrers down the drain.)

Earlier this week, I was searching for something in the kitchen drawers (what? I don’t remember, nor did I find it) and came across the couch legs. Might as well put these on now that I’m in the middle of another task.

The legs that couch didn’t need miraculously fixed the awkward angle. The cushions stayed on. Something about not having it placed directly on the floor made it softer and wider. Its new height allowed me to get off it without any sciatic nerve complaints.

Three minutes.

It took three minutes to put those legs on.

Three minutes of time that I could have used last June to prevent a year of bitching about a badly designed couch that I had “redesigned” and used in an incomplete state without even once considering that the problem… might not have been the couch.

I titled this “Things I Learned From My Couch” thinking I would continue from this point and outline exactly what it was that I learned, but I don’t think I have to.

You know.

Especially if you have a minor inconvenience in your house that you’ve been neglecting for months or years. Maybe this will be the weekend you’ll do something about that.

I’ll be on my couch.