If you have children in your home, what sort of sofa should you choose?

With kids in the house, you probably need more seats. A 1 seated sofa is not
as cost effective as a 3 seated sofa. You need 3 single seated sofa to seat 3
people as compared to just a 3-seater. The price of 3 single-seated sofa is
significantly less than the price of a 3 seated sofa. 

That means, for a large family, you would save substantially if you go for
the 3 seated sofas as compared to several 2 or 1 seated sofas.

One way to see the best value is to calculate cost per seat of that
sofa. 

For a single seat, the cost per seat is just the price.

For a 2-seated sofa, the cost per seat would be price divided by 2

For a 3 seated sofa, the cost per seat would be price divided by 3

and so on.

The best value would be the sofa with the lowest cost per seat, everything
else remaining the same.

Next, consider the dirt factor. I mean, kids, with their tendency to jump on the sofa, would dirty the sofa
very quickly. Not only that, they would eventually break the springs in the
sofa. You could train the children not to walk, jump or play on the sofa. But it
is wiser to get a sofa set that can withstand the stresses a kid would bring.

Eventually, you still have to clean the sofa.

Our first sofa was a beautiful fabric sofa. It turned a dull gray over the
years. As there were no slip covers, we would have to wash the sofa with an upholstery
cleaner or to leave it be.  On the hindsight, sofa sets with removable slip
covers would have been the better bet.

Alternatively, we could have bought 2 sets of slip covers for our sofa while
it was still new and rotated those to protect the sofa instead. Slip covers can
be washed, so you can always have a clean sofa to sit on. To a busy mom with
kids, slip covers are a boon. Dump the soiled slip covers in the washing machine
and slip on clean covers.

Our next sofa was a leather
sofa. That turned black within weeks. The kids would pretend to be Spiderman
climbing the walls, with the sofa as the wall, or Spiderman jumping from roof to
roof, with 2 adjacent sofas as the roofs. We bought a leather cleaner to clean
it up. I wrote about that experience in care
of your leather sofa.

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