It’s been about 6 years since I bought my couch. When I first moved away from my parents and into my own apartment, I went to a nice furniture store and found it. It was so comfortable that the first time I sat down on that model in the showroom, I knew it was very likely the one I would buy, and it was. Nothing else in the entire store came close to how comfortable it was. It fit perfectly in the apartment, too.
At that time, I paid about $800 for it, which was a lot of money for me at the time, and it’s still a good chunk of money I wouldn’t throw out on a whim. But I had known I would need furniture, so I had saved up for it. Given that I’ve had it for 6 years now, I’ve spent about $133 per year for the couch, which is not bad.
Mind you, I believe my sister and brother-in-law got their couch for free, and I think they’ve had theirs longer, too. That’s a good deal, and several friends have furniture stories like that. But their couch is covered in cloth, and while it’s still pretty comfortable, I’m not otherwise a big fan of cloth couches, so I’m kind of committed to leather.
But the problem is that faux leather wears out much faster than actual leather. If this couch had been actual leather, it probably would have cost at least $2,000, which I definitely didn’t have the money for when I first moved out. Right now, the faux leather is peeling off in tiny flakes, and I’ve been tracking it all over the house, much to my great annoyance. In many ways, I wish I had paid more for a true leather couch to begin with, but when I first bought it, I had no idea it would peel so badly, and it was so comfortable on the showroom floor I felt no reason to buy anything more fancy.
This is the challenge we face with pretty much everything: do you buy the cheap option and potentially get low quality, or do you buy the expensive option and potentially get high quality? And price is often, but certainly not always associated with quality. Sometimes you can get lucky and find cheap furniture, but sometimes you just want to buy what’s readily available, and don’t want to waste time hoping you get lucky. Although this couch is dying a slow and painful death, it’s certainly been comfortable since the day I bought it, so it’s hard to say it’s been a waste.
There’s a very real chance I will be moving out of state next year, and although there is still a lot of research and prayer that I need to do before that might become a reality, I keep reflecting on what I’ve learned about myself over the years. For example, if I move out of state and back into an apartment, I really want a large living room, because I want more space for guests. My couch has been great for one person bumming around and watching YouTube, but it’s a bit tight for having guests over, and it doesn’t make for a great space to talk, either. An alternative to that might simply be finding a more comfortable kitchen table and chairs (no offense to my roommate), but I’ve always loved being in houses with those great big sectional couches that are angled and allow you to talk to others with ease. Ah! Wouldn’t that be great?
Of course, I also want a cat, and they sometimes like to destroy furniture. Not always, and apparently there are things you can do to try to prevent this, but should I move out of state into a nice apartment, and buy a large, expensive leather sectional, just to then get a cat that destroys it?
I’m a big fan of strategy, but strategy only goes so far. At a certain point, you just have to live your life. You can find cheap furniture, but very rarely is it ever precisely what you want. To get precisely what you want, it makes more sense to buy it new, but this makes it a lot harder to get value per dollar, since furniture is almost always a depreciating asset.
I don’t think you should ignore value per dollar. At the same time, value per dollar is just a simplification. Calculating the cost per year is very different than calculating the cost per use. And beyond that, there may be no true way to calculate the cost of satisfaction, of truly enjoying something and getting good use out of it.
Yeah, maybe don’t spend a ton of money on that piece of furniture that sits in the corner of your garage, or that sits beneath piles of boxes in your basement (something strangely common in America), but if it’s a piece of furniture you use ever single day, maybe it’s okay to buy what you really want?
On that note, it’s important to remark that I only have friends over once every two or three months. What’s the value of an expensive leather sectional in light of that? But sometimes I actually feel a little sheepish having friends over simply because I’m not happy with my setup for such occasions. The real question would be, if I had the setup I want, would that mean I would have people over more often, or would the current pattern prevail?
I don’t know that I care. Honestly, $2,500+ for kickass furniture is a lot less than people spend on their fancy new cars and renovations for their houses, so I don’t know why it should be such a big deal. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that furniture is so often ignored or neglected when it’s actually so legitimately useful, and whether you like it or not can have such an impact on how you live your life. So honestly, if I do move, I’m leaning toward going big on the couch, as long as it fits wherever I move. If I do move, it’d be the perfect time to ditch this couch, for as comfortable as it is, these faux leather flakes are driving me crazy, and I’m getting tired of trying to find leather tape to patch everything up.