The day the white couch was delivered was perhaps second only to the day my daughter was born on the scale of best days ever.
Sure it gets dirty, but you just take those slipcovers off, throw them in the washing machine with some bleach, toss them in the dryer, and your couch is as good as new! As good as new! In fact, it's even better because you have the smug satisfaction of knowing your couch is cleaner than your neighbor's couch because who knows what horrors lie within that dark taupe fabric that the eye can't see.īasically Pinterest was created for the purpose of making women everywhere feel like we aren't living up to our potential. I really can't put the sole blame for this purchase on her, though, because the truth is I'd been pinning white couches on Pinterest for months along with doing Google searches like "How hard is it to clean a white couch?" "Am I crazy for wanting a white couch?" and "White couch: friend or foe?"Įvery blog post I read by someone who'd made the decision to buy a white slipcovered couch raved about how it was just so easy to maintain. We fantasize about how life would be so perfect if only we had that new couch from Pottery Barn, if only our kids wore smocked dresses instead of that same old Gap T-shirt with the stain on the front, or if only we could finally lose that last ten (okay, fifteen) pounds of baby weight and fit back into our skinny jeans.Ībout three years ago, I made a mistake of epic proportions and let an interior designer friend talk me into buying a white couch. I've read so many articles about what porn does to a man and why it's so damaging, but as women we deal in some form of what might be called "emotional pornography" all the time-often without even realizing it. With social media, it's never been easier to get a glimpse into strangers' lives and decide their marriage is better, their house is cleaner, their kids are better behaved, while we are just a step away from living in a van down by the river and we don't even care because our children are so ill-behaved that it would seem like a vacation. If I could sit down across from you (and I so wish we could make this happen), I would share that perhaps the thing I've learned the most over the last several years is that we all have a tendency to compare our lives to others' and think everyone is living a better story than we are. It's messy and hard and beautiful and wonderful, sometimes all within one hour.
Whether you are married or single, have kids or are childless, work from home or in an office, volunteer for the PTO or just watch a lot of Netflix on your couch, life has its ups and downs. Are you wearing clothes right now? Did you send your kids off to school wearing clothes? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all those things are now dirty laundry. Are you sitting on your couch right now feeling smug because you believe you've actually washed and put away all your family's clothes? Then let me ask you a question. The laundry will cause your soul to shrivel up and die because it's a battle you can't win. I didn't understand for a long time that the real reason I only had one child was because God knew I couldn't handle the laundry for any more than that, but I know it now without a doubt. Also, can we talk for just a minute about the laundry? It never ends.
There are dishes to be washed, beds to be made, and laundry to be done, and no one wants to see a movie about that. The truth is, real life doesn't usually resemble what we see on any kind of screen, especially the big screen. We all have a tendency to compare our lives to others' and think everyone is living a better story than we are.