I CLEANED MY COUCH!!!

...and I forgot to take a before picture.

This couch always looks grey when it photographs but it's really a very light sea glass green.

That sounds horrible, doesn't it? Like I've never cleaned my couch before. Here's the deal. This was a couch we bought back in 2005. I didn't love it but I did like that it was a sort of sectional, it wasn't one of those huge overstuffed giant type couches with the big rolling arms and it was in our budget. This room is our playroom/ TV room/den. We use it as an all-purpose family room so we needed sitting space but didn't want it cluttered up with furniture. The floating chaise is nice because it gives you a little more extra room for sitting and it can be switched from left to right just by moving the base and flipping the cushion. But the biggest disappointment was that it was microsuede... which is a fancy word for "easily stained polyester".

At the time we purchased it there were huge warnings everywhere telling me not to use water on it. Water and water based cleaning products would leave PERMANENT WATER MARKS!!! So, the furniture store gave us a ton of their special cleaning solvent... seriously, like 50 tiny bottles. And I've been spot cleaning it only. It's not that bad since the kids usually keep all their food at the table, but it is also used as our sick couch when someone is feeling a little puny. After a whole bottle of Gatorade was spilled on it this morning, something had to be done. This post gave me the courage to unzip those covers off and toss them in the washing machine. (If you read that post, read all the way down to the update or else you will think I'm crazy that a post on spot cleaning a couch gave me he courage to wash my cushion covers.) That's right. I tossed them right in my front loading washer, on normal cycle (max extract) used my regular detergent and then even popped them in the dryer on ex-low (delicate) heat. I tried air dry first and realized that was going to take forever so I bumped the heat up to ex-low for about 20 minutes. They were dry in no time. The girls and I wrestled them back on and then stood back in amazement. "Wow... I don't think it's been that clean since it was new!" someone said. Since I'm still only spot cleaning the arms, it's not really true, but it sure looks that way!