The only two things in life that are guaranteed are death and taxes.”
This saying is a lie. There are actually three things that are guaranteed: death, taxes, and at some point during your adulthood you will be slowly driven insane by the quest to purchase a new sofa. Why do I dare make such a bold claim? Because I no longer fear death or the IRS. For I have faced the dreaded task of finding an affordable, aesthetically pleasing couch for my home and somehow lived to tell the tale.
Before I turned 40, I had miraculously escaped this horrifying ordeal. As a tried-and-true member of Generation X, I spent most of my 20s and 30s rolling my eyes at the living room sets of my “sell out” friends who dared buy themselves decent home furnishings.
It’s one thing to be a hip on-the-go 20-something who laughs off conventional living standards. It’s quite another thing to be a middle-aged woman inviting co-workers over for drinks and suddenly realizing you have nowhere to seat a group of people who hold your career in the palm of their hands. Watching your boss try to climb her way out of a ripped bean bag chair you found at a flea market doesn’t exactly do wonders for your job security woes.
“Your place is great, Rebecca,” my boss politely stammered, as she wiped Styrofoam chunks off her $500 Donna Karan pants. “So, uh … you don’t have a couch?”
A couch? No, I don’t have a couch. I’m not one of those “couch” people. The Queen of England has a couch. I have three old record crates turned upside down. I don’t have a couch.
Up until that point, the most I’d ever spent on home furnishings was the $12 Ikea coffee table with a broken leg I snagged at a yard sale. The thing is, couches, whether you buy them online or at a fancy store or in a thrift shop, are freaking expensive. It doesn’t matter how well-off you are, a couch is a ridiculously over-priced product that for some reason must be in your home for you to be considered a proper adult. I bet Bill Gates sits around his zillion dollar mansion and gripes about how much the sofas cost him.
The first thing I had to do in this process was inform my boyfriend that rather than buying a new PlayStation 4 we were going to use our savings for a sofa. The effect was like telling a child that you’re taking him to the dentist instead of that trip to Disneyland you promised.
“Why don’t we just go to Sears and get one there,” Chris suggested, not having any idea what he was in for.
“It’s cute that you think we have mall store money,” I said, trying not to laugh. “You are sitting on a chair I dragged out of a dumpster. We don’t have mall money. We maybe have Big Lots money. Maybe.”
“What about that store downtown—”
“If we’re not on a mall budget, what makes you think we have a ‘downtown’ budget?” I said.
The first few weeks of Couchghazi (which is what Chris came to call this seemingly endless ordeal) were relatively painless. I started by looking online and found a website that promised to help me find the perfect sofa to complete my unfulfilled couch-less life. I first had to take a highly scientific quiz called “Determining Your Decorating Persona.” I had no idea such a thing as a “decorating persona” even existed.
My results for the quiz were alarming: “You are a ‘DRAMATIC’ decorator.” Apparently the sad collection of random thrift store findings cluttering my living room were giving off the same angsty vibe as a teenager storming off to her room because her parents don’t understand why she wants a Joe Jonas tattoo. “For crying out loud, Rebecca, will you get your dining room table to calm down? It’s such a drama queen!”
One of my oldest friends from school offered assistance. “You’ll love this site, they have lots of cheap couches,” she wrote.
Filled with hope, I clicked on the link only to find that none of the sofas were cheaper than $6,000. Who in their right mind would spend that kind of money for something that basically serves as a graveyard for nacho crumbs and dog hair? My car didn’t even cost $6,000.
In the weeks to come, I dragged Chris across three counties to more than a dozen furniture stores, flea markets, and antique shops. We scanned hundreds of websites, bookmarked countless pages on Amazon, and still I had found nothing to satisfy the vague picture in my mind of what I thought I wanted. My couch had to be affordable yet expensive looking, neutral yet bold, traditional yet modern, bright yet subdued, black yet white, a couch YET NOT A COUCH AT ALL PERHAPS.
After staring at possibly millions of photos of couches clipped from the pages of Elle Decor, Chris entered what I can only describe as some kind of fugue state. I would find him huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth chanting Yes I like that one, yes I like that one, yes I like it, yes it’s great, it will look good with the curtains, yes I like that one, yes, please just buy it, please, please, over and over again.
I realized what scientists discovered thousands of years ago: A human being can only tolerate being asked, “Do you like this one or this slightly different one better?” so many times before one finally suffers a total mental breakdown and warns that if you ask him which godforsaken couch he prefers one more time he’s going to move all his worldly possessions into the yard and live in a yurt.
Luckily it didn’t come to that. I’ll save you the story. (Chris’ version is that he was guided by voices of angels who eventually pointed him to the couch we bought; my version is after watching Chris yammer about “his mission from the couch gods” I agreed to buy the first one he pointed to. Either way, we got a nice couch.)
Next time I’m going with inflatable furniture. My coworkers can meet me at the Red Lobster.
Rebecca Rose is freelance writer and satirist who has written for Cosmopolitan, Jezebel, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Marie Claire, Elle, Seventeen, Redbook, and many others. Send comments to the editor at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 8-15, 2016.
