Aug 18, 2016 3 min read

It’s a fact of housekeeping that inanimate objects will suddenly turn on you. A piece of furniture or art can have been collecting dirt or disintegrating for months – years, even – and you either didn’t mind or didn’t notice until that one moment when you just can’t have it.

The sofa in the family room did this to us this week. For years, it has been sitting there under the windows, its golden wheat-colored, basket-weave cushions cradling people or dogs but usually several of each all at once. It was the seat of choice for those coming through the kitchen door and looking for a place to take a load off. The dogs like the sofa because they can perch there and look out at the driveway as we come and go. I can’t tell you how many movies I watched while lying there, my left leg draped over the back.

That’s years of dog hair, dust, sweat, food crumbs, drink spills and other kinds of schmootz – all laid down one atop another like layers of lasagna.

The sofa has always been headed toward embarrassing filthiness. I bought it after a long search for a sofa plenty deep enough and long enough for two people to comfortably watch TV while spooning. But all that comfy deepness captures people, and they either won’t get out or can’t. And the rough weave of the fabric captures every speck of dirt. This is why elderly aunts and grandmothers put those plastic covers on their sofas.

That morning, I looked at the sofa and saw what I had failed for so long to see. It was golden wheat-colored only in my memory. That sofa sitting there in the family room was something more in the tan family, and furry. I’ve seen nicer couches hurled into junk trucks on those hoarding reality shows.

I started unzipping. Off came the covers from long, tubular back cushions. Off came the covers of large, square seat cushions. The uncovering brought a flurry of goose feathers and dog hair.

And now: dry clean or to launder? Dry cleaning would be the safest, but this dirt cried out for soapy water.

Into the washer they went. Out they came, more or less intact. After an air drying, it was time to put things back together. It was like trying to stuff a marshmallow into an uninflated balloon. Or Beth into some size 4 jeans, I guess. Whatever, my daughter and I attacked those cushions like a couple of pro wrestlers. Finally, a broken zipper and nine swear words later we emerged from the battle, sweaty but victorious.

The sofa was back together.

Did we return it to its former golden glory? Some of the schmootz never did intend on leaving. But the sofa looks cleaner, and fresh-ish.

I like walking into the room and looking at the sofa now. I will stand there feeling a deep sense of accomplishment, and then a dog will run in from the back yard, wet schmootz bomb that he is, and jump on the sofa to look out the window.

Sigh.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.