The Couch

Of all the furniture that you can put into your living space, the couch is probably the most important. It can easily be the most expensive if you buy it new. As with your office chair, you have to try the couch on. Sit in it. Take off your shoes and curl up into a corner. There must be plenty of support and plenty of padding. Now, get up, if you can. If you can’t get up as easily as you got down, don’t buy the couch, no matter how pretty it is or how little it costs. Short people especially, can be devoured by man-eating couches.

Chances are you are going to use your couch a lot, particularly if you bear any resemblance to a nutritious, tuberous vegetable. So your couch needs to be comfortable, to begin with. Sturdy and well-made goes without saying. A couch that’s going to see a lot of use needs to be upholstered in something sturdy. If there are pets or toddlers involved, well, don’t use white, for one thing. Some couches can be purchased with multiple sets of cushion covers and slipcovers—a very good idea.

But the really fabulous thing a couch can do is contain a bed. A futon can be converted, too. The main disadvantage of a futon is, there are no corners to curl up into. But a convertible couch can be any size from a narrow cot that unfolds out of a chair, a twin from a loveseat all the way to a queen-sized bed if you have the floor space for it. Convertible couches come in all quality/price ranges but a good one is well worth the money.

For one-room living, or to turn a study or living room into a guest room, there is nothing to beat the versatility of a convertible couch. If you have gruesome memories of a horrible experience, go to a good furniture store and try out a new one. The mechanisms and mattresses have all been improved over the years and you might find yourself very pleasantly surprised.

The next most important piece is what sits in front of the couch. Well, you have to put your feet up on something, don’t you? A coffee table that is merely a table-top with legs is a waste of space. Something that uses the volume of space between the top and the floor is much more practical. There are coffee-table height chests of drawers and ones with open shelves and storage baskets and ones with a combination of both, even glass-topped display cases. For one-room living a storage ‘coffee table’ is imperative—just put wheels on it if you have to unfold the bed into the same floor space.

The one type of coffee table that looks lovely in a magazine but has little to recommend it in practice is the heavy glass table on a heavy metal stand. The darned thing shows every speck of dust and every fingerprint. If you put stuff on it, nobody can see how pretty it is. It isn’t practical storage. And lastly, spurting arteries make such a mess! Why tempt fate?

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