Thursday, September 11, 2008

Free Couches Aren't Free


My husband and I subscribe to the theory, "Why buy something brand new if you don't have to?" Consequently, when it was time to replace our couch about a year and a half ago, we went down to the DI (Deseret Industries, local thrift store) and picked up a new-to-us couch. It was in pretty decent shape and we paid $50 for it.

Well, we have four children, three of whom are frisky boys. After a year and a half, it was time to bid adieu to the couch and get another one. I'd been thinking about it for weeks, and while driving through my neighborhood the other day, I noticed that a neighbor had a couch on their lawn, with the magic word "FREE" posted on it.

I sent my husband down to check it out, he proclaimed it better than ours, and we hauled ours to the giant Dumpster just across from us. Then he brought the new one up. It was a lot more firm and a lot less hole-ridden and life was good.

Until it wasn't so good any more.

We brought it in last Monday. I got a low-level headache that night, which isn't unusual for me, so I didn't think anything of it. But over Tuesday and Wednesday, I noticed that I just didn't feel very comfortable in the living room. Something was wrong.

Finally, Sunday night (yes, I'm a quick study) I realized that I was having an allergic reaction to the couch. I had my husband drag it out of the house, and immediately I started to feel better. My lungs had been closing off, the headache was pretty bad by this point, and I just felt . . . odd, but as soon as the couch was out of the house, those symptoms began to abate.

So I'm feeling a lot better now, but I still need a couch.

We'll be heading to the DI this weekend.

8 comments:

Don said...

Welcome to the weird, strange world of allergies.

I would put my bet on mold, but at this point there's no way to know and it really doesn't matter.

Happy couch hunting.

Tristi Pinkston said...

Just as long as I can find a way to keep from inviting more of it into the house!

Heather Moore said...

Not a fun experience. Hope you didn't get it from a meth house.

Karlene said...

I've had that happen with older books sometimes. Makes me sick to read them due to the smell, I guess. I'd go with mold too.

Jenn said...

I was thinking dust and mold, but meth would definitely be worse. :D

Tristi, your blog was so timely for me right now. We were couch hunting for something to sit on in our newly-finished basement a week or two ago and we drove all over two counties to check out couches off of KSL.com.

This one couch we found was in good shape, but it was dirty. My husband thought that didn't matter because we could always carpet clean it, but I was a little relieved when we found other things wrong with the couch and didn't buy it.

On my way home that afternoon, my eye started to itch really bad. In fact, I missed my exit because I was rubbing my eye so much and feeling miserable. That's when I remembered turning my head and the right side of my face touching the couch. Now I'm /really/ glad we didn't get it.

I think I'd rather sit on the ground now than have a couch like that in my house. :D

Carrie and Troy Keiser said...

That is very odd. Did you get a "new" couch?

Anonymous said...

Did you ever consider this bad 'vibe" spiritual?

Tristi Pinkston said...

It could have had something to do with that as well, but bad spiritual vibes generally don't close off my lungs. :)

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