If you were a child in the 70’s or 80’s, chances are, you encountered a couch condom.
Okay, so maybe you’re unfamiliar with the term. You may know them as slipcovers, or the shrink-wrapped plastic that our parents layered on the furniture to preserve and protect what was underneath. You know, like a condom.
And what were they protecting the furniture from? LIFE, of course! Sticky fingers, wayward juice boxes, muddy pants, shedding pets, sharp toys, cookie crumbs and baby bums… all the things that come with being blessed with a family. Plastic slipcovers were the equivalent of a velvet rope; lifted with caution – and only for VIPs.
I often wonder why furniture required such proficient preservation. I mean, did our parents think that they’d be handing down that sofa through the generations? Or maybe in the off-chance the Queen visited for tea, the pristine velvet couch would signify grooming and grace.
Regardless, the message was loud and clear: this is our home, but we don’t actually live in it.
Did you grow up in a shrink-wrapped home? Did you have a formal living and dining room that were only used on “special” occasions, and then, just as quickly preserved the second the guests left? Looking back, I often marvel at the amount of space in homes that was for show only; the living room at the front of the house, the overly formal dining room, the guest room that was perfectly made up – and perfectly unused. However, times are changing.
A recent Ipsos-Reid survey conducted on behalf of Urban Barn revealed the majority of Canadian homeowners (71%) are “living” differently in their homes compared to the one they grew up in.
“Homes are evolving to accommodate the ever-changing ways in which Canadians are living in their homes”, says Candice Laughlin, architecture & home design expert, Urban Barn. …