After realizing that our uncomfortable futon was not working as a couch, and never would, we decided we needed to get a couch. However, without a car (and with a budget of like…$150) this presented some problems. How were we supposed to go look at couches, try them out, purchase one, and somehow bring it back without the aid of a car?
I figured there were a few options. Probably the best option would be to just one Saturday rent a Zipcar. Some of the Zipcar options are very spacious (I think there’s a Scion available). It would be easy and it would be about $66 for the day.
This option also made me wonder how small-car-owners do things like buy couches. Perhaps they too would have to rent a Zipcar. This, of course, made me feel very validated that I had sold my car, because I didn’t have a small car AND need to rent a Zipcar (this is completely ignoring the fact that the one and only car I’ve ever owned was a Subaru Station Wagon).
However, since I’m (as previously mentioned) lazy, I have yet to actually apply for a Zipcar. So I would need to do that before I would be able to rent one. Due to sheer laziness, that option was out.
I like crossing things off lists. Thus, I asked my mom if one day she would be willing to drive us to the hotel surplus store. She agreed, saying several times “It’s a REALLY weird place.” Two things I really liked about my mom driving us :
1. More opinions on the “is this the right couch?!” question and
2. We could do it in one day. Efficiency. That much closer to crossing it off the list.
Unfortunately, the hotel surplus store did not work out. We looked around at a couple other places. Nothing. My one-day-only couch plan had failed.
Coming back to our apartment, the failings of my plan, and the inability to go back tomorrow and look around, forced me to get a little creative with the couch. I put the futon folded up on the floor (no, horrible); I moved things around; I looked up floor cushions.
Then, in my carless-forced-creativity, I had the greatest idea of all time. I thought about couches I have known and loved. This reminded me of the couches in my friends’ apartment in Morocco. We didn’t have the space for a shisha/pillow pile, but we could build bench couches.
We took the two halves of the wooden futon frame and placed them on the ground in an L-shape. Through the power of foam, old pillows from my parents, and scouring the Pier 1 sales (“where are your biggest, cheapest pillows? do you have more?”), we’re on our way. Now we just need to make one of the benches sit flat on the ground, and keep buying more cheap, giant pillows. Then we’ll have TWO couches, the bases of which we would have thrown away.
Would I have come to this idea if I had a car and could easily drive around, checking out Ikeas until satisfied? Maybe. But maybe not. So as of right now, I’m glad the loss of my station wagon prodded me into some design creativity.
