What’s Your Sofa Story?

Living in a building site can be really very draining. It’s so important to be able to have places to relax around the house. Luckily we’ve already completed our bathroom renovations, so a good relaxing soak is most definitely welcomed every week. I also have my home study for a relaxing non-chaotic place to work, but of course the most relaxing room of the house should be the living room. Snuggling up on the sofa with a good book, watching a film, it’s the ultimate room for relaxation and it wouldn’t be so without the sofa.

Our living room might be quite an ugly one, it has dated carpets, a hideous fireplace and generally doesn’t scream “relaxation” in any shape or form. Except for our sofa. It’s the first sofa we’ve ever bought brand new and chose because we liked it and not just because it was cheap and “would do”. Not only does it have style (c’mon, it’s grey, you know how I feel about grey), it’s ridiculously comfy, and even the perfect length for a lie-down snooze. It was the most expensive piece of furniture we’ve ever purchased (from Made.com if you were wondering!) but we wanted something quality and something that would actually stand the test of time. It’s the one piece of item in this room that looks and feels relaxing.

With the sofa being potentially the most sat-on item of furniture in the home, if it had eyes and ears, it would probably have seen and heard a lot in its time. Yorkshire based furniture brand, Distinctive Chesterfields has looked more closely into the lives of our sofas, surveying 1005 people over 18 to see what exactly happens to our sofas during their lifespan.

In our six years of living together, we’ve owned a whopping five sofas! I know how shocking that sounds, but two were left for us by the previous owner of the first house (they were horrendously old, dirty and ugh!), one was a very cheap sofa-bed that quickly fell apart and one was a quick second-hand purchase to make-do when we had none. All of these sofas barely lasted a year in our home, until our latest addition, which is now a year and half and still going strong. Having spent a small fortune on it (opposed to the £40 of our last make-do sofa) we’re invested into looking after it and making it last for many years to come.

On average, the survey showed that the majority of people had owned their sofa for just between 1-3 years as well. Surprisingly though, sofas are meant to last an average of 8 years, depending on quality. I most definitely hope to still be rocking our sofa in eight years time! How long have you owned your sofa?

 

• Less than 1 hour: 25%
• 1-2 hours: 24%
• 2-3 hours: 20%
• 3-4 hours: 12%
• 4-5 hours: 7%
• 5-5 hours: 3%
• More than 6 hours: 8%

But what else has your sofa seen? Well for us, it’s seen maaaany dirty paw prints. So much that we actually currently have it covered in a blanket now – turns out our dogs just love the sofa too! Our youngest dog especially likes laying on the back of the sofa, I don’t know whether he just likes being up high or the back cushions are especially comfy from that angle, but he becomes a weird kind of parrot dog sat almost on your shoulder. Our sofa also gets a lot of spillages, again courtesy of the dogs. They just have this habit of jumping onto your lap just when you’re ready to sit down with a cuppa. Ah. It’s also the place where we curl up on sick days, plan our renovations whilst watching some TV and where we intensely battle zombies on a video gaming platform. It really has its multiple uses.

Here’s some fun estimated averages at what your sofa may have seen or heard during its time:

• 232 movies watched and 4380 hours total of TV time.
• 1 Stressful house move.
• Seated 284 visitors but also been jumped on 1548 times by your pets.
• 167 spillages but only 3 permanent stains.
• £17.60 in total found among its cushions and 11 lost socks.
• 1 new TV and 3 new blankets.
• 178 books read.
• 192 arguments between couples and 215 cries, but 845 cuddles.
• 78 hangovers and 161 naps.

What has your sofa seen?