If it hasn’t happened to you chances are it’s happened to one of your friends. There’s that fabulous couch you found at the ABC Home Store warehouse sale, or stopped eating lunch for a month in order to afford, and that’s become your urban refuge. That’s is until THE BIG MOVE.
You’re searched for months, been too slow in making a decision a few times, but finally found the perfect apartment. Except for one little fact: your couch won’t fit. In New York City it’s become such a problem that a whole industry has arisen around “couch crunching”, and appointments with the NYC Coach Doctor are increasingly hard to come by, but taking a soft apart and then rebuilding is becoming a more common occurrence.
However, even when the couch fits it can still have a profound effect on what happens next. A couch was actually what I bought even before I moved to New York City, looking at it as a grown-up piece of furniture and carefully paying it off first from after-school and then from part-time jobs while in college. That sofa, a heavy sleeper no less, meant that there could be no easy transition for me into the waiting space of a roommate since, invariably, either there was no room for a couch at all or there was one already in place. This meant finding my own place, own roommate, and eventually helping my parents and then boyfriend maneuver that couch up five long flights of stairs. That was only the beginning, when it finally landed years later in my friend’s suburban basement. That, though, is a story all its own.
Why all the interest in couches? Well, it’s moving season in NYC so plenty of couches going in and out, but it’s also the time of year when one of my closest friends moved into an apartment in another city. Her brand new couch was too heavy for she and her father to move, so a handsome young man coming home from work rushed over to help. Just a few days ago, three years later, they became engaged. All over a couch. You just never know.
