 Oh, my goodness. You have no idea what we're about to experience today. I'm Angela Brown and I'm with SavvyCleaner.com. We are a company that trains house cleaners and maids and we've been in people's houses for 30 years. Now, one of the cool things is I've seen a lot of couches and I have some pretty nice couches of my own. In the last couple of months, oh my goodness, we decided to move. Many of you have been following my move on the internet here and the people that are buying my house, check it out. They have asked to keep all of my couches and I'm sitting here like, okay, well, we can negotiate that in the price. And then I turned around looking at the new house. I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm gonna have to buy myself some new couches and I have no idea what my aesthetic is. My realtor says, I have an aesthetic and I'm like, what is that? She says, that's your style. And I said, I don't think I have a style. I haven't bought any couches in like 15 years. So my question for you is, are you moving this spring or are you updating your lifestyle or do you just have an old beat up couch that the dogs have shredded? There's a bunch of animal visitations on it or maybe it's got fur, maybe it's got stains, maybe you got pizza smearing on it. Who knows what is on your couch? But today I have Alex back with me here today and I'm really excited because he is the couch expert. So for all of you house cleaners, listen up. For those of you that are wanting to get rid of a couch or two, we have some questions that we're gonna be answering about that as well. So stay tuned for the most interesting time that you ever spent learning about couches. Please help me welcome Alex back. How are you today? I'm good, that was a pretty heavy lead in. We better be very interesting today, Angela. Well, we are, I got a ton of questions that have come in but before we jump into our questions, I wanna find out how did you become so passionate about couches? Because here you are today on my show. Well, some people do call me the couch king. Now these people are very close in my circle. So maybe it's just because they know I like to hear it. I don't know. But I have worked in the furniture industry for a pretty long time for the last 15 years. I founded a popular online furniture brand called Apartment 2B, APT 2B. And that was my former company. I'm now the founder and CEO of couch.com which is a website domain that I acquired last year and I'm trying to make it into something really special. But my background is really, I've sold hundreds of thousands of couches to people all across the country. I've answered every single couch question. I used to sell couches in a retail store and a retail level. So I know how to clean them. I have couches myself that may be surprising to hear but I also have them and have cleaned them many times with my kids and pets. So I feel fairly qualified to speak on this particular issue. Awesome. All right. Well, let's dig into the questions because we've got so many questions and I wanna start out with just selfishly my own question. So I'm in the market for some new couches but I have no idea where to start. Where's a good starting point for a person like myself that's moving into a new place and I will give you some heads up. I'm downsizing and we have no kids and no pets at this stage of our lives. So it's just me and my husband and we're probably going to use those couches just to sit and watch TV and hang out but we want them to kind of look nice as well. So but you're not building any forts just to be clear. No forts. Okay, okay. All right. So yes, it's a very common question because I will share with you that you are not alone in that no one really knows where to buy furniture and that's where my whole business idea was born from. After talking to thousands of people over years about couches for so long, I realized that no one really feels comfortable. It's something we don't buy very often even if you don't have couches for 15 years you at least have them for four or five. So it's not a purchase that you're used to making. It's almost like less common than buying a car which is something that's also very uncomfortable for most people. There are a lot of ins and outs to the industry and there are a lot of different options. So it can be difficult just to level set. What I always say, the best way place to start is to, you know, we is to gain context to be comfortable with anything. I think like we as humans need context. We need to understand whether it's like food what's in the food, how is it made, you know whatever it is that we're consuming or buying we need to understand it. So I think the first step is education. And that doesn't mean you have to like take a course on couches. When I say education I mean, just literally devote some time to going online and browsing around at different couches use Google as your friend. I think just seeing what's out there is seems obvious but not everybody does that. Then maybe their first step would be to walk into the local furniture store. But I think there's a pre-step that you can do in your home or wherever you are on your phone even just doing some research. Another way is just to really like take out a pad and paper and write down the things that you really like about your current couch. Most people are buying a couch, have a current couch or a very familiar at least with one you know that they've been using for a while. Write down what you like about it. Is it, do you like curling up in it? Do you like sitting with your feet on the floor? Those are two sort of opposite metrics if you will and those can greatly determine the course of where you might go to find the couch. Do you wanna go for a more like sort of upright more mid-century design that let's say for me if I put my feet up on the couch my eyes go like this. So I need to keep my feet on the floor when I'm watching TV otherwise it's lights out quite literally. Well, you know when we purchased our previous couches we went in with this in mind we said we want to make sure that our furniture lasts us for about 25 years. So we're gonna buy really high end stuff that's really nice. So we went to the really expensive stores to sell really nice furniture. What we bought was stuff that looks really nice. And so we bought like white couches that have like these little claw feet. And one of them only was like a lounge chair where like it starts at the top and then it kind of like goes down to like a bed kind of thing. And it looked awesome. And so we put that in the sitting room because back in those days maybe people had you know rooms where you walk and there's a formal living room and a formal dining room. So we had like this formal living room that no one ever sat in and the couches just looked awesome in there. But I mean literally 20 years later because we have had those for 22 years nobody's ever sat in them. They still look brand new. And so now I'm trying to sell them because I don't think that as we're downsizing that I'm gonna have one of those rooms that no one will sit in. And so I'm trying to sell them and no one wants to buy them because they're too big. They're like those are too big for the house that I live in. Then the next thing is the sofas that we had in the living room were leather. And they were all leather front back sides underneath. It was all leather, grippy rivets on it. It looks amazing. And now we're many years in I would say probably 20 plus years in on those as well. And they still look brand new. They look awesome. They're wipeable, washable, whatever they look awesome. And those are the ones that were leaving behind. But those were never really very comfortable. When you sit in there you just kind of like sunk all the way to the back and it made you really small. Then you had to use like all your abdomen muscles in your arms or like push yourself back up out of the chair. And when people would come over they would just like sink into like the leather would like engulf them. And then to try to get them out were like, here, let me give you a hand and we'd yank them up out of the leather. So as we get older, we're not gonna be doing that. So we're looking for something different that's maybe more user friendly. It's not probably gonna look the same. We did make the mistake of going into the first furniture store. We're like, hey, let's go see what they have now. And we walked in and we're like, wow, that is really expensive and really ugly. And we turn around and we walked out. We didn't buy anything. So we're stuck. We have no idea what to do next. Okay. I love it. Well, first of all, if you're doing the right things by taking a very thoughtful approach just the fact that you're able to narrate that for me like that's kind of step one. And a lot of people may not have taken that step yet. Again, as obvious as it may seem really evaluating what you currently have and what you like and don't like about it. I think that's step one. I always like to say that, there are a thousand different variables when choosing a new couch, but there are usually a few key lead variables. So here's some things I heard you say. You mentioned that the leather was really easy to clean. So it's likely, let's just talk about those and not the sitting room ones. Not that you're necessarily replacing those. Leather couch, you may be looking for leather, okay? So that's a lead variable and that's gonna greatly determine your next steps. You mentioned something that you wanted to be very comfortable but not something that you're gonna like sink in. And these days, there's a lot of styles that are very popular that are meant to sort of envelop you and engulf you. So some people like that personally, I like to have my feet closer to the floor. You mentioned the first store you went into, everything was very expensive. And so I think that figuring out what your budget is, now that you have a contextual point, if you went into a store and saw a couch that's let's say $2,000 and that was expensive or someone that was $5,000 that was expensive, well, there you are. You're on your way to starting to determine your budget. If you guys determine that that's expensive for you then clearly you wanna spend less money. So determining a range, understanding that you looking for leather and something cleanable and something that isn't overly cushiony. These are the types of lead variables that will help you with your next stages of your search. Does that make sense? Yes. So I think- So I appreciate that because I find that I'm not alone. As I look down here, I see that Katrina Anderson said after 23 years of having my suede and leather furniture nobody has ever sat on. So me and Katrina are twins. She says, no, I purchased a leather theater style furniture. Nobody will sit on that either. Now I don't know if nobody's allowed to sit on that or if nobody will sit on it because they're not gonna use the home theater. I don't know. Yeah, let them sit down Katrina. If you're not letting them sit down that's a you problem. You gotta let them sit down first and foremost. Yeah, and I think I'm coming over. So maybe you will get some use out of that. Who knows? So knowing that there's a budget that's involved knowing what your style is one of the important things to me and always has been and I think a reason many of the people have joined us on this call today is we wanna know how do you clean a sofa? And so can you share with us a little bit about the differences in the types of couches that are available and then the different types of cleaning possibilities so that as we go through and we're like, okay, I'm willing to spend the money. I'm willing to get something that's comfortable but I wanna make sure that it's gonna last or that I am gonna be able to clean it once I bring it home with me. Absolutely. Let's start with types of couches, okay? I think just to level set because this is a concern for virtually everybody furniture manufacturers know that you don't have to have like crazy kids like I do to need to want a couch that's easy to clean everybody wants a couch that's easy to clean. And I think the industry has sort of followed suit or has catered to that need now for quite some time which is to say that you're probably pretty good and pretty safe with almost any like 80 or 90% of the couches that are on the market. You probably don't need to worry that much about the clean ability that people get really fixated on like comparing one fabric versus another versus another. The fact is most fabric sofas these days about 80 to 90% as I said are made with polyester based fabrics. And even though some of us think, I'm sure maybe this audience is a little bit more savvy and understands that polyester isn't like when I first thought of polyester I'm thinking of, you know like the leisure suits my dad used to wear in the 70s that's not the case. These are, it's just a synthetic material and polyester can take on many forms velvet most if not all modern velvet that you'll see thick suede's those are all polyester based if they're a hundred percent they're very close. So polyester is a very easy to clean material versus something like a linen or a cotton that can be a little bit more environmentally susceptible to things. The whole point is you want a fabric that is spot cleanable at least if not, you know, a machine washable there are plenty of options out there if you really feel like if you have a senior dog like I recently had a senior dog past but you know, it's going, it's okay. I don't know why I just brought that up but anyway, yes, it was fairly recent so it's fresh on my mind, sweet guy. But yeah, he had a lot of incontinence issues at the end. So for me, I needed a washable rug for sure. So I got a washable rug from Rugwell, great company by the way but I think there's lots of different types of couches out there that are okay for everyone but specifically you want to look for fabrics that are polyester based. Polyester does not have that negative stigma that some of us maybe grew up with. And of course leather, leather is still sort of the king or queen if you will of the cleanability factor when it comes to couches, things do just wipe right off. Sometimes those very high end leather products you'll find, and this is fairly common sense I would imagine like some of them aren't treated the same or finished the same and may not be as repellent. Like you'll notice some leathers, you'll, if you like put a glass down on a leather topped bench or something, you'll see a ring and you're like, oh, whoops, versus other types of couch leathers you can put water on it and it beads up. So then that's one of the things that we've noticed in cleaning many, many people's homes over the last 32 years. One of the things that I've noticed is when people lean up against the sofa like with their head, there will be like gels or hairspray that will come off on the fabrics or if people eat in the sofa, which is really common if people are playing games or they're watching TV and just eating food or whatever. There will be a lot of stuff that's on the armrests or between the seats or the balls on the cushions. And then like if there are seams, it will get caught in the seams or inside the designs. One of the things we've seen with like, I don't know what you call them, they're like puffed couches that have like, Tufts. Yes, tufts. You'll see like crumbs and garbage that are in those things that you literally have to go in with a vacuum with a hose attachment to like vacuum out, as well as lifting the cushions up on the couch to vacuum underneath and around those cushions. So there's a lot of wear and tear that couches get and we know how to clean them basically, but you mentioned pets. Pets are a really big source subject because a lot of cleaning companies don't clean incontinent animal residue off sofas. And so it's left up to the homeowner or the B&B owner who has guests that come through on a regular basis where there's lots of residue that's left behind on the couches. So is there a particular go-to product that you have that's maybe a favorite in situations like that where you've got to turn the couch for the next guests or the next family members that are coming or the next use and it's just kind of icky? Yes, for lighter sort of lighter accidents or residue, as you put it, I would, first of all, I always say first try a little bit of water. Now, not every couch is able, like not every fabric likes water and sometimes you can, a fabric, even polyester based ones can be left with water marks. So this is a test and area on the back type situation to see how it may react. But most couches are able to be, you know, you can use water. So personally me, when something happens, I like to clean as much with water first before I go to the cleaning products. To me, I feel like that just, it gets a lot cleaner where you're diluting the issue, whatever the stain is a little bit and it generally helps. So that's just my first suggestion. I have found that the more natural products actually seem to work better on fabrics in certain cases. There's a lime based product called Backout and maybe you guys in the industry know this very well. I buy it at Whole Foods and I think it's, I'm sure you can find it online on Amazon or whatever else but Backout, B-A-C-O-U-T is wonderful. It smells really good. It doesn't smell overly chemically. It has like a very like sort of natural lime scent. Like I would use it as a room spray. So I was very happy to find this product and having an incontinent pet for the last three years like I've used it under a lot of bottles. There you go. Thank you for spelling that. That's exactly right. So that's a great product and it's natural and I have my kids around. So I don't feel like we need to fumigate for 20 minutes afterwards. But the other thing I'll mention is, a little insider tip, which is that if you're assuming your cushion covers are removable on a fabric sofa, not all of them are. Most seat cushions are, most seat cushions you'll find will have a zipper in the back with and you can take off the cover. That's really hard to get couch cushion covers back on foam. So people will often take, seriously, they'll take one look at them and be like, yeah, no, this is not supposed to happen. It does take a little bit of elbow grease. It's like, you know, the fitted reaching in the corner for the fitted sheet against the wall. Sometimes it's just like, please just keep going, please. Oh yes, I got it finally. It's one of those type of situations. All that to say, take the cushion covers off. You can clean them better that way and it won't get into the foam. Whether you're spot cleaning or dousing with something or putting in the washing machine. Now, no furniture retailer is going to tell you that a fabric is machine washable unless they are 100% sure. But what I'm here to tell you is if it's polyester based, certainly if it's 100% polyester, you can wash it on cold, on a cold cycle, gentle cycle, just don't put it in the dryer. Put it in the dryer, all bets are off. But if you air dry, I've done this with numerous couches for various reasons. I've instructed customers to do this as well. I've never heard of an issue unless it goes in the dryer. So that's a really good tip, I think, that most people don't know. That's an excellent tip. How do you dry it then to get it dry if it has like the corners on it and a zipper in the back and it's kind of like a pillow case? Yeah, so I think what you're referring to is the fact that it's a little bit cumbersome and sometimes, like picture a long, the long cushions are called chases or like a big long bench cushion that may have an odd shape to it or some accents to it can be difficult. I just think, use your best judgment. But the fact is it does take a longer time to dry because they are like weird odd elements. So it's not something you wanna do if you're having people over that afternoon, maybe, because it won't dry, you know, it just has to air dry. And I wouldn't put it outside in the sun because that could sort of have a similar effect of if the sun is too strong, it can cause it to dry in a way that's a bit unnatural. So you wanna have them- So possibly take like two, maybe two folding chairs or two- Yeah, exactly. Maybe chairs that are not gonna have, it's not gonna warp them in some way and kind of stretch it over the two chairs so the air can get in and out and let it dry naturally and then put it back on the sofa. Exactly. I think that's a great tip. And, you know, you can do a gentle fluff cycle if you feel like it needs it. Usually it doesn't. And then, you know, putting it back on the foam, just be patient. I would do this one maybe without your partner president, present if you have one. It's one of these things that people like, like, you know, it's frustrating to argue. I never recommend that part two partners will move any furniture together or anything like that or do anything sort of physically difficult in the home. It can cause some arguments. Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know another time. So just do it and don't say anything about it and just hope that they appreciate that it's clean. Exactly. I got it. Okay. Do you recommend slip covers over sofas that you know you're gonna be using frequently? Absolutely. So that's something that I've been writing a few things about for couch.com recently, like slip covers. There's two things I have to say. One, they're way nicer than they used to be. Like it used to be that there was like two kinds of slip covers, white and like blue jean material for the entire 1990s and early ox. It's like, okay. But now there's plenty of inexpensive options out there. I don't mean to plug Amazon again, but you know, cause there are definitely plenty of places and a lot of interesting brands doing some very cool things around this. I think searching for them on Google or Amazon will yield some very surprising results. Another fun way to look at it is like there's a lot of seasonal ones. Now I'm not a big like, you know, shtick kind of guy, but if I'm hosting a Super Bowl party, you know, I'm like, there were a lot of like cheap slip covers being sold. That might prevent your sofas from getting Cheeto fingers in there. There you go. Yeah, we've all had the Cheeto fingers at some point. You know what happens when you start touching fabrics with those Cheeto fingers, it's not pretty. That's right. Okay, so the question is this then, if you are buying and you are wanting to spend some good money to buy some quality furniture and you are willing to, when no one's looking, take the covers off and wash them so that they stay clean and nice, are there anything else that we should look for in purchasing a sofa for the person like myself who is downsizing, who is gonna plan on keeping it for a few years? And the reason I ask is because do I go for the high end furniture knowing that I don't have pets and kids around right now or do I go ahead and go for, no offense, but I wanna say like the IKEA brand where it's gonna be cheap and quick and fast and inexpensive and I may have to replace it in a couple of years. Great question. So I don't, I think when it comes to fabrics, fabrics and cleanability, that as long as you're not going too promotional or lower end with your purchase, you're probably gonna find very cleanable options and generally high quality furniture once you get out of the promotional price point. I find that there's diminishing returns when it comes to really high end furniture that a lot of it's about the sort of bells and whistles and luxury elements that one doesn't necessarily need. I'll have to say, you can get a great piece of furniture that is both cleanable, durable and looks and functions great for a reasonable price these days. IKEA, just because you mentioned it, I feel the need as a couch connoisseur. I really am not a fan of IKEA's upholstery. I think that it's incredibly overpriced for what it is. And I think it actually, they've just, they're able to sell a lot of it because most of us associate IKEA with great value in a promotional price point. But truly their couches are of the same price point as what you would find in most local furniture stores or it's sort of popular price points around $1,000 to $1,500 for a typical three-seater sofa. You don't need to get it from IKEA and IKEA's quality is definitely lesser than what you normally find out there. Not to hate on IKEA, I think they do great at other things, just not couches. Interesting. I wanna stop for just a second and I wanna say hello to everybody that joined us. You guys, I'm super excited that you've joined us here today and I just wanna say hi. Hi, Sola, good to see you here. Richard says, hello, Angela. Cynthia says, good afternoon, Miss Angela. Katrina, we said hi to Katrina already but Katrina said hi back again. She says she's got plenty of soft cushion folding chairs. And then Katrina said, I would sprinkle a little arm and hammer and let that sit for 30 minutes and vacuum it up and then steam clean. So we've got some great ideas and advice coming from Katrina. Katrina, I think we're still friends. I love your cleaning tips. Thank you so much. Commander Alpha Turkey says, hello, everyone. Well, hello, Commander Alpha Turkey, back to you. And Nola says, I machine wash my sofa covers. I dry them on my back porch over the backs of my patio chairs, which is awesome, great tip there. I also steam fresh cycle the down cushions one at a time in my dryer for 15 minutes and it looks brand new. Thank you guys so much for joining us here. And if you have questions for Alex, please jump in and ask those questions. My next question is, what if you have a sofa that nobody demanded that they keep it when you move on and you are getting ready to get rid of it your own self? How does one dispose of a sofa that maybe is stained or maybe is beyond repair or it's just fallen apart or it's got big rivets and dents in it where people have sat and it's never gonna poof back again? Yeah, I have a lot to say about this for two reasons. For a number of reasons, I've been involved in these conversations with many, many customers over the years because generally speaking, when people are buying a new couch, they're replacing an old one. It's a very common question. The most common question that retailers get is will you take away my old one? Most, if not, I don't wanna say all, but most retailers and delivery services will not remove existing furniture. So that creates a little bit of an issue for people understanding that they have like a large item that they need to get rid of. So their mind immediately goes to like, how do I trash this or get rid of it? Which may be the case and I actually am a founder of a junk removal company here in Los Angeles called Valley Holloway where we do a lot of residential furniture removal with people who are furniture experts and know how to do it without damaging your home, et cetera. But the big thing is that you don't need to junk a sofa unless you absolutely, what am I trying to say? You don't have to junk a sofa unless you absolutely need to junk a sofa and here's why. The second hand furniture market is hotter at this exact moment than it's been in either of our lifetimes, Angela. So this is a time when, especially some of the younger generation millennials and Gen Zers, they really value sort of upcycling and reusing things as much as they possibly can. It's something that I don't know that we were all raised with in my generation but the newer younger generations and my kids who are a little bit younger than that really are into this idea. So I wouldn't sleep on the idea. Even if it's something you think may not, like who would want this couch? It's been beat up by my family for 20 years. Someone might want it. And case in point, the people who are buying your house, Angela, they want your couches. I mean, it sounds like you kept them in great condition but even ones that are not in great condition. Check out Facebook Marketplace. That's the number one place that people are buying and selling used furniture, if not in many other items as well. And so there's plenty of couches on there. You may get $50 for it, $100. You may get $1,000 or $2,000 if it was a really high-end piece. It could be worth some money. It could be worth exploring. Craigslist was a place that we used to do this for many years. And I think Facebook Marketplace has sort of usurped Craigslist position. There's also a website called OfferUp where we offer up free items or you can put a price on it. But before you look at junk removal as something you have to pay for or look at your couch, getting rid of your couch as a chore, think about what you could do with it to make a little money, make somebody happy. Maybe there's someone you know that you can give it to. And there are plenty of charitable organizations that will take furniture that is in decent condition. There are a few asterisks there, like things that they won't accept. But Salvation Army is the obvious first example I think most people think of when they think of a charitable organization. They accept furniture donations and they will come into your house and take it away for you. So all that to say after my long speech, the point is before you think about putting your sofa out on the curb, think about what you might be able to do with it. Can you make some money with it? Can you give it to a good cause? Can you give it to a kid down the street who's moving into his first apartment? There's usually a use for such a, these pieces are made to last a long time for such a nice piece of furniture there's usually a second life for it somewhere. That is phenomenal and I'm glad you brought that up. So how does one decide what their aesthetic is if they have discovered that, okay, I've determined my price range and I've determined my washability factors and I've determined how I'm gonna use it. Now let's talk about style for a second. There seem to be a whole bunch of different styles out there and I'm not sure which one is mine. It's a great question. I think the, how does anybody find something that they like, right? It's more of an existential otherworldly question a little bit, but for me just to try to put a form and a function to it, it's, you need context first. And when people think of what's a nice couch that's not something that they necessarily know versus apparel, people generally know what they think is a nice piece of clothing because you've been conditioned to it. You've bought clothing so many times. You see clothing, you observe it of others. They talk about it on TV, whether it's a red carpet show or whatever else. Like clothing is a huge thing that's talked about in our society, but furniture isn't. Furniture is only talked about in certain circles or when you need to talk about it. So it's harder to understand what you might like. But I think just really exposing yourself to a lot of different images and videos of couches online, different rooms, there are plenty of websites that offer a lot of inspiration. One that I think is a great editorial based website that's wonderful for inspiration is called apartment therapy. Apartment therapy is, it's a pretty big website, but it's really the only one that's dialed in and focused on like real life interior design, people who live in apartments and homes versus something like, you know, architectural digest or vanity fairs a little bit more like, well, that's not for me, but I see that it's nice. Looking at finding inspiration from sort of other real people and real customers like you maybe is a great way to do it. Another way is just to go to different stores, sit on a whole bunch of couches, go look at them. You went into a store and you didn't like anything that you saw in that particular store. So maybe you go to a few more and keep trying different types of stores until you find something that clicks with you like a nice piece of clothing. You just kind of see it and you're like, I like that. Well, and that's what I'm doing. Here's my problem. I asked myself this question because most of the couches are not free, right? Most of them want a couple of thousand dollars for the couches. So at a couple of thousand dollars, it's easy to say, no, I wouldn't buy that. But my question to myself is if that was free and someone gave it to me, would I have that inside my house? And if I look around and I'm like, no, no, I wouldn't. And I turn around and walk out, then they're not gonna get any money out of me because even if it was free, I wouldn't take it, right? So now I'm actually on the lookout like I'm looking for couches and I'm looking for sofas and I'm looking for chairs and I'm looking, right? And I'm hoping that something's gonna jump out at me, but there are so many different colors. And then I wonder, is there a particular color that's not gonna look dingy or not gonna look, I don't know, like dated or something if I buy it and bring it home with me in two months down the road. Oh, look, there's a new trend or a new fad and suddenly my lovely sofa that I finally settled on is now dated and I'm like behind the times. It's a great question. So there've been a lot of bolder colors and furniture over the last, you know, 15 years or so. Like my former brand, we like to think at least that we brought the neon pink sofa and made it sort of normal. We brought that into the online space. Shame on you. No, no, it was good, I swear. But like my couch at home, what's that guy? The turquoise or the mustard yellow ones? Yeah, exactly, like there's plenty of these mustard. Mine is like a burnt orange at home right now. It's honestly a little much. I had it in a different place and I moved. I'm like, okay, it's a little too much for this space. So you have to really see like can my space, I'm at a friend's house right now, actually helping him determine whether his, a chair that they have is vintage and how much it may be able to be resold for what they can do to repurpose it because they don't want it anymore. It's interesting we were just talking about that, but I digress in my house, you know, I think I might want something a little bit more even toned versus a bright orange or a deep, like a bold green was the previous sofa that I had. Cause I was like, oh, I love color. Like your background, it's like some, some situations can, can have like a lot, can take a lot of color. And some may need like a beige couch like to have here in their, you know, backroom garage place that I'm in right now. Notice behind me, there's a turquoise pillow. Now you can choose to have a couch that entire color and it'll change the, the look of the entire room. So maybe that's what your room needs. This room needs a huge pop of color. So I'm going to go for a bold color or actually, no, this room could use a, some muted tones. There's a lot of, I have a lot of paint things up. There's a lot of pictures, a lot of, a lot of busyness around here. I don't want to put a busy looking sofa. Maybe I'll jazz it up with a, with a few colorful accent pillows like this. That's the sort of other way to go about achieving a color scheme without going big with it. So that would make sense then maybe to go with a muted color scheme and dress it up like you said with pictures and with accent pillows and things like that that would give the pop of color. And then if the times or the styles changed over the next few months or the next couple of years, you could then change out those pillows and those paintings a lot less than you might replace the furniture. Is that what I'm hearing? That's absolutely correct. But what you just described is a narration of what I would call the safe choice. And sometimes with design, it can pay big dividends to not go with the safe choice and to go with that bolder color. So it really depends. The good thing is there are a lot of amazing visualization tools out there right now. And I'm going to plug one. I have no stake in the game whatsoever, but at Wayfair, they recently a few months ago unveiled this really cool AI tool that is called, of course, I'm not going to remember it because I'm on the spot. It will come to me, Wayfair's tool to do AI visualization, Decorify. So if you search Wayfair and Decorify, it may be still in the trial phase or the beta, thank you. And what you do there is you upload a picture of your actual room and then it will use AI to replace, if you say I want to replace my couch, it'll replace your couch with a different couch and you can go through a few different looks. Now it is AI, so it's a little wacky. Like it'll also put wallpaper up. You're like, we don't know. I didn't say anything about wallpaper. Like, what is, where did this come from? Well, yeah, they're giving me some extra decorations here. A little bit, a little bit too much. You're trying to sell me a new dog and that's not my dog. Like, it can be a little weird, I think, some of these new visualization shows at the same time. It can allow you to just open up your imagination more than you ever would before and all of a sudden you see that hot pink neon sofa in your living room where you had a beige sofa for the last 20 years, you're like, whoa, that actually looks amazing. Then next to it, they show you products that either are exact matches to that couch or very, very closely resemble it and you can browse their catalog and then look at prices and set filters that way. But sometimes with visual aesthetics, it's really hard for people to visualize what could look good in their room. Even me, if I think about couches every single day of my life and I don't really know always what the best thing is. So having a tool, and it's not the only one that when I mentioned, having a tool that can help you visualize, very valuable. Well, thank you for bringing that up. I did not know about Decorify and as soon as we are done with this project here today, I'm gonna just jump on there and I'm gonna be making all kinds of pictures and finding out what my bold style is. I got a question for you as a dad with small children. You mentioned the need for a certain type of couch that is gonna last and stand the test of time. Tell me what are some of those choices for people with small children and or pets? Okay, so kids do two things generally speaking that we need to sort of plan for. One, they spill stuff. So fabric is super important. Like I would never put a fabric on a couch like a linen fabric that you literally couldn't clean or that just belongs in a magazine photo shoot somewhere. Like these need to be- Our grandma's did that and then they put like plastic fabric and so forth. And I was like, what? I don't even get to sit on this like, what's up? What's interesting though is like it was almost out of necessity because if they didn't wanna be cleaning the fabric all day back then, and I don't know when then was but my grandma was born in 1911. For her entire life more or less, there existed zero polyester fabrics on couches. So she didn't really have the option to spot clean the floral print that she had on her couches. So I understand it in one sense, but it's on the other hand, it's also like, I mean, you gotta use it. It has to be comfortable. So two things, kids, they will spill stuff and they will also usually jump on the couches and mess around with the cushions. Like just, I would just call it just general displacement. Like my kids were jumping one of these and the couch will move two feet. So if it's something, if it was a more promotional like lower end couch, you might have some frame or leg issues. And I've seen that over the years in my career, of course. But let's talk about fabrics. Again, as I said before, I think most fabrics these days that are sold in general, as long as you're not going to some high-end custom furniture shop or through a designer or something like that, you generally don't have to worry about it very much because most are synthetic fabrics that are spot, if not fully washable, spot cleanable, if not fully washable. One thing I just do want to point out, there's a lot of great Velvets on the market. That's my favorite fabric to recommend for families with kids. Because, yeah, Velvets are 100% polyester. And it's case in point, I don't even need to explain. You did what I said, what I was about to say, which is people don't know that. And I've had an amazing fabric on my couch for, it's called the Royale fabric. And a lot of the main furniture sort of fashioned forward like the West Elm, Pottery Barn, Creighton Barrel and a lot of the online competitors, the boutique sort of Instagram brands, if you will, that I competed with. We all carry the same fabric. It's called Royale Velvet and it is, yeah, extremely cleanable. Like there's literally my kids have chewing gum on my couch and I haven't cleaned it for a few weeks because I just know that it will come out. I know all I have to do is just scrub it. So I wasn't like the light, you know, the world's ending. I'm just like, I'll leave the chewing gum there until I'm ready to clean it, just to give you a sense. But anything that spills on it, water, you just wipe it right off. And then there are plenty of like actual performance fabrics where, you know, kind of like a lot of us are familiar with the brand Sunbrella for outdoor fabrics. Basically that same technology and genetic makeup, whatever it is, however they treat these fabrics, they've brought that to indoor furniture over the last five to 10 years. And those are very popular as well where the water sort of liquids will beat up and it's like extra cleanable. However, I find that the velvet is a little bit softer, more plush, more comfortable for everyday use and it's almost pretty much just as cleanable as some of these more performance fabrics. So beyond water, is there any special product that you use if you have to get out of stain, for example, let's say like blood or it's going to be a protein stain, like a baby spit up on it or something like that where it doesn't readily come out with water. Okay, so for blood, so there's two products that we all want to give you guys some real good secrets here. This is some deep level industry stuff that all the cleaning product companies don't want you to know because you don't have to buy any cleaning products. You probably have them in your house already. For blood, hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is a miracle. I have no idea why I don't, I'm not a scientist but hydrogen peroxide on any blood stain, it will just, it will make the blood foam up so much that you can literally just wipe it away. It's unbelievable. And it doesn't- Is that on all color fast products or it will work on anything? As far as I know, yes. I mean, first of all, if you have blood on something you kind of need to use something that's really going to get after it even if your fabric may not love it, it may leave a residue, I'm not positive. So I feel, I'm not sure. We can maybe answer that in the comments later on if anyone has a question, but another tip I have for anything outside of blood, this is what we use on the showroom floor. We don't have a bottle of like Resolve or Febreze or Backout even. We use rubbing alcohol. Pure rubbing alcohol, isopropyl rubbing alcohol. We keep big jars of it next to the couches. The reason it works so well it smells terrible. So that's one thing, you know, this is something you like need to like give it a few minutes to dry before you go back to it. But it's incredibly pure. It has a lot of stain fighting power and it is not water-based. So it dries very quickly. And for certain fabrics that are not very friendly with water like certain fabrics as I mentioned before will leave water marks. If you put some liquid solvent on it rubbing alcohol does not do that. So- And how do you use it if you're using rubbing alcohol? Great question. So the word sparingly is always kind of funny cause like it doesn't like to me it feels like it's a lot but I think sparingly actually means like a little bit only as much as you need. To me, I would use it liberally. I don't like if I have like a scort bottle kind where you like literally douse it it will dry. It smells bad. It feels like you're doing something wrong. Do you spray it then? You spray the area that's affected? I didn't. Or do you put it on a cloth and dab it with a cloth? I think so what I would normally do just for application purposes I find that if you put it on a cloth it sinks into the cloth lots. You have to kind of use a lot more than you would. I would go directly on it. Again, it will dry a lot quicker than a liquid solvent or water. So you don't have to worry about it as much. I mean, you don't want to dump a whole bottle on there, obviously. But if you can maybe if it's let's say just like a wide mouth, you know, cap I'd just put my thumb over it like you do on a hose when you don't have a nozzle. Yeah. And I would just do a little sprinkler like a little sprinkle of olive oil. I would just do a little sprinkle on there just so it's well covered liberally. Okay. Obviously use only as much as you need. I'm just saying you probably use more than you think. And then going with a microfiber cloth or even a paper towel, it's just paper towel may leave residue marks, you know, like the paper towel fibers will come apart. So generally the recommendation is microfiber towel and you sort of go in a circular motion. And is that also true for coffee stains? Yeah. I would do it. There are a lot of home really cool home remedies out there. In fact, we have an awesome blog post about the hardest stains to clean. So if you go to Couch2Comm and you literally type in into the search bar, hardest stains, there you'll find a video of me talking through like the top 10, you know, some of the stuff I just talked about, blood, coffee, red wine, the good news is almost anything is able to get out of a couch. The ones that are a little bit more difficult are not the protein, I like that word by the way, like a baby spit up or things like that. It's more the ones with high fat content like oils. Okay, so like chocolate, like if your kids are eating like milk chocolate and it's kind of, and it's a hot day and then they just like rub it on the couch. Again, ask me how I know. Well, that's, that's timely because we're approaching Easter and I know that Easter there's lots of chocolate that gets smeared into couches, especially at grandma's house. So yeah, that's important. That's right. And that's right. And wouldn't you know, the nice older woman down the street, Pat came by yesterday with a whole bag for the kids full of chocolate. I was like, thanks a lot, Pat. And now you're gonna watch him do or you're just gonna leave the bag here. So, yes, it does happen and it's really, it can be really hard to clean those. And not to step into, step over another question that you or the audience may have but if your cushion covers are removable and there's a stain that you don't feel comfortable cleaning, I have a great tip that I always give to everyone. It's one of these ones that seems kind of obvious but you don't really think of it. Bring it to a dry cleaner. They may not want to clean it. They may not do like big furniture cushion covers. Most of them do, by the way. But dry cleaners don't only dry clean. They actually treat a lot of stains with many other methods as well. So that is something that even if you're just going in there and say, hey, can I talk to somebody about this? Is this something you guys, how would you clean this? Having a conversation with your dry cleaner. You probably give them a bunch of business if you, you know, if you're their customer. So I'm sure they'd be happy to have a conversation with you about the best way to clean something even if they're not doing the job. Those are excellent tips. So rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide and then we want to wash the fabrics that we believe are polyester and those are in cold water and not in the dryer. We want to drip dry those over a chair I forget her name, but a patio chair if you have a patio chair on the back patio there. So thank you guys for those tips. Those are awesome. What are some maintenance tips for us to regularly keep our couches and sofas clean? Just on a regular, every day-to-day basis. So a lot of things, just cause I vacuumed my couch cushions yesterday, my kids were eating, my kids were eating and what was it? It was like Jamaican patties that I got at Trader Joe's. But if anyone's unfamiliar with that, it's like kind of like a picture like a flaky croissant, right? The kids are sitting back eating, watching TV. The croissant goes everywhere. What I would do is clean it up right away. Don't let it get there. Don't let it get in between the cushions cause that has the oils and that's what you really want to watch out for. Oils, fat, butter, you know, things like that. Those can be really difficult to get out. So I'd just, first of all, triage things as quickly as possible before staying set in. But general maintenance-wise, yeah, I would make sure to give your sofa a wipe down here or there. I would do it in my house, even like with my type of fabric, I'll just take a very damp paper towel and just kind of go around on cleaning Saturday or whatever we're doing so that it's easier to see other stains when they do happen. If you have a sofa where you sort of let something go, like a pair of sneakers, when you get that first real big stain on the white sneakers, you're like, all right, well, they're gonna be dirty now and you just stop cleaning it at some point. You don't want that to happen to your couch cause your couch you're gonna keep for a long time. So I just say, clean it regularly cause you might as well. But my biggest couch maintenance tips have to do with the cushioning and that's not really a cleaning thing so much. It's a general maintenance thing for longevity and you have to rotate your cushions. If your cushions are rotatable, they're meant to be rotated. You can't sit in the same place. You can rotate them between different spots. If that's possible, you can flip them over as much as you can. It would be a great, great tip to keep the foam in good shape. And also to try to sit in different areas like on the long chase cushions, people generally sit on the back of it where they can sit back on the couch like this, but you actually have to literally make time to sit on the front or find a reason because the more evenly you break in couch cushioning, the longer that cushioning is gonna last and avoid this kind of thing happening which can also affect your fabric and the general cleanability. It's sort of a cycle or cyclical thing with couch maintenance. Coffee cup says, he's terrific. So votes from the audience and then Katrina Anderson says to keep furniture clean, keep people off. Okay, so see Katrina, I said to you before, you gotta let people sit down, but I guess you don't want them there. Ah, I love it. I got a sense of humor coming in. So are there anything that a new person, not a new person, an existing person that's gonna buy a new couch, something they should be on the lookout for besides the cleanability and also the price? Is style have anything to do with it as far as claw legs or spindle legs or legs that are on casters or what should we be on the lookout for? Yeah, so again, there are two things about couches that are extremely subjective. One is comfort because what I may find a firmer sofa more comfortable someone else may find like the restoration hardware famously has this cloud couch that's been so popular that everyone's knocked it off in the furniture industry. It's literally like sitting in a cloud side note. You can't get up from your couch, try getting up from this thing. It hogs you and doesn't let you go. It's very interesting to see how they made that. How did I get there? I don't know. What were we talking about? I literally just forgot because I got so involved. We're talking about what should somebody be on the lookout for when they go to purchase a couch and something that they should be looking for or not looking for or should avoid something like that. Great, sorry. Yes, I was trying to make the point that comfort is very subjective and aesthetics are very subjective as well. So it's really hard to say but I'm really good at I think finding the logic within certain sort of intangible points like I was saying before. Start with what you may seem obvious but make a list of the things you like about your couch or don't like about your couch aesthetically even too. Maybe you don't like brown anymore. Maybe you like the chunky leg look or maybe you like something that's a little bit lighter silhouette and airy. A couch can really change the look of a room. So I would really actually think about it deliberately like actually write notes down and talk if you have a significant other another decision maker or a family. Talk about what you like about the current couch but I guess the one logical point or tip that I would give is to stay away from things that seem very for now meaning like very hip and stylish for now. Like one of the hottest new fabrics that everyone's about to see on the market is a hot tip because I saw it at the furniture convention in Las Vegas about two months ago. It's a fabric called Monster Fur and it's exactly what you think it might be. It's like a Muppet. It's very cozy. It's very eye-catching. It's a conversation piece. It's like a synthetic fur, like picture like a stuffed animal with a very high fabric pile. The cleaner in me is saying, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I could just see food smashed in those longer pieces of pile. Please don't do it. Don't do it. It's tough. It's tough. But that's kind of my point. It's like it may be nice for a little while but that may just be like a stylish thing for now. So timeless designs are usually, if you're thinking about investing in a piece for a long term, I would maybe Google timeless furniture designs and then see what has sort of, what has stayed the course over a longer period of time. If you're really looking for just general advice and guidance, see what styles have been around since for the last 10 or 15 years versus just the last two. Cause those are the ones that are likely to stick around for the next 10 or 20 years furniture. Styles can be very, especially couches. They can be very timeless. And so that's always a sort of a safe way to go. There's a brand that I'm working with for couches.com now called Medley. And they have wonderful made in the USA couches that are very, I would describe the design of 90% of them as very timeless. So yeah, I think just, I think going for that is a good logical point but really looking around, getting inspired by other things you see out there on the market and magazines and apartment therapy on couches.com wherever you're looking, really just start observing things that you like and making note of them. Tell us about couches.com and what we might experience and how we can benefit from using that website. Absolutely. So couches.com is meant really ultimately to make people feel comfortable upon intended buying a new couch. So we're trying to meet customers and users and people wherever they may be in their process. If they've been researching heavily already and they know exactly what they want but they're deciding between two brands, we have brand reviews and comparisons that you can, we have a lot of top furniture brands that we've already reviewed and we're gonna keep going that direction. People are really liking those. And then a lot of people just have no idea where to start. Maybe it's their first time buying a couch and they inherited the couches that they had and had them for the last 20 years. The first time buying a couch and they don't really know anything about it. What are all these terms? What's a love seat? I thought my dad always called it a Davenport. What is the difference between a couch and a sofa? Some of those basic education terms, we have a lot of information about those two. That from interior design tips and everything in between. And ultimately we're building a platform that helps you find a retailer near you that fits your design comfort aesthetic and ultimately meets the variables of the couch that you're looking for. Well, I really thank you for your time today. I know as a house cleaner being inside people's homes we've seen hundreds, literally hundreds of couches and sofas. We've seen hundreds of chairs and we've cleaned them. We've cleaned underneath the sofas and we've cleaned the legs and we've cleaned the arms and some of them have like little arm sleeves that go over the arms. Some of them we've seen dirt in all the weirdest places and we've seen where the dust collects whether it's on the back of the sofa or it's the back of the chair or it's the arm rests behind where the arm rests like flip over if it's like a big fluffy chair. There's like these little pockets of dust that collect that no one cleans. And then you got to go back there with like a damp microfiber cloth and wipe it all down. So I've had a lot of experience with sofas and I'm really keenly aware of the variety that's on the market. But if you're not and you haven't been in hundreds of people's homes I want you to encourage you to go to couch.com and take a look around and see that, hey, maybe my sofa is outdated. Maybe I just need a new facelift. Look for my house as we move forward through 2024 or maybe you're like me and you're moving and someone has demanded that they keep your couches and then you're gonna have to go on the hunt and buy some new ones like me and my husband get to do now. So I really want to thank you, Alex for your time today, cause I've learned a lot but also thank you for your tips on helping this clean, keep our sofas and our couches clean. I appreciate your help today. My pleasure, it was super fun chatting with you Angela, anytime. Thank you. Please tell our listeners where they can go to find you. Couch.com and if anyone has any questions you can reach me directly. I'm very communicative person. Alex at couch.com is my email address. I may not be able to get back to you right away but I will get back to you if you have any questions whatsoever about buying couch or cleaning a couch I'm here for you. Awesome, thank you guys so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Till we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.