When I was a life coach… (Oh, you didn’t know I’ve had just about every job out there? Some time I will list them all out for you and you will shake your head in disbelief; for now, know pedi-cabber, postal worker, and yearbook salesperson are just the beginning.) Anyway, when I was a life coach, we talked a lot about “energy drains” – those little annoyances that suck a tiny bit of your energy every time you see them and don’t do anything about it. You know, the pile of bills you keep meaning to get to, the door that won’t fully close, the pile of too small clothes that you can’t seem to get downstairs (and this is just what I can see in a three foot radius).

I find when I finally take care of them, there’s this huge influx of energy and I feel giddy, which my husband thinks is totally Crazy Town because what kind of a weirdo gets high off of organizing her shoes? This one.

Well, we have had a friggin’ energy flood around here in the form of our Disgusting Couch. Yes, our couch is so revolting we call it Disgusting Couch, lest anyone who visits think we think it’s normal to have a couch as stained and dirty as DC.

Anytime anyone new comes over I spend the first five minutes manically laughing and saying how with the kids we just haven’t wanted to buy a new one because they might get it dirty while our visitor nods sympathetically and frantically looks around for other seating options.

I know this seems a bit dramatic, but here’s a photo to help you understand. Please note, this is AFTER cleaning it and you can’t tell how baggy it is and annoyingly it’s acting like a bad boyfriend on a good day – it’s normally five million times worse!*

On our anniversary it hit us – we’ve had DC for ten years, two kids, four moves, and a lot of nights of messy Indian; it was realization enough to decide finally to plug up the drain and BUY A NEW COUCH.

Can you tell I’m just a little bit thrilled with our new beaut? It has literally changed my life (and not in the Internet/teen way, but in actuality). We had a new friend over the other night and I pretty much threw him onto the couch (in a very non-sexual, friendly way) I was so excited to have someone test it out.

I talk about it, I lounge on it, I LOVE sitting in our living room now – it’s pretty much the equivalent to my daughter’s obsession with Frozen. We have so much to talk about now, my husband cannot WAIT to get home at night.

We ended up buying it on Apt 2B, which is a super-affordable site with really cool, modern furniture. The risk is you can’t see it in person (it’s all online), but we figured it was worth it because it couldn’t be worse than what we had (and they’ll send you samples). The whole process was really easy and I’ll probably use them again to buy a coffee table.

You want to see it one more time? Of course you do.

See? It’s so remarkable it’s even brought us together as a family. Now just imagine what would happen if I could finally replace the dining room rug…

Linkage:

-So many thanks to Erica Bean Photography, who didn’t think it was strange at all when I said I wanted to do a photo shoot of my new couch. She takes lovely photos of families together (perhaps on your new couch?).

–Apt 2B is a my new favorite online furniture shop. If you want to see more of their furniture in action, check out this gorgeous remodel over on Homepolish.

*It was so bad that we put it out on the street and NO ONE took it. This is in the same city where people once took a dresser drawer (just one drawer!) from in front of our place.