In 2006, we bought a new sofa and lived with it for nine years in our Tokyo apartment. It was a great place for naps, long conversations, wine parties, and all sorts of hijinks.
In 2015 when we moved to Kamogawa, we gave the sofa to UltraBob. Seven years of family life with a growing boy and twin girls left some scars, but when UltraBob and his family moved to Canada earlier this year, I was delighted to take the sofa back. I was so happy that we’d have our favorite comfy place to sit again. And what a great story!
We hired GoldStar Moving to bring it across the bay and I stored it in our garage until moving day – at that point, moving might have been anticipated for early June.
I buffed the leather up with saddle soap and got a repair kit to fill in the little cracks But moving day shifted later, the weather got hot and I was busy at the house, so I put off the repairs.
And while I wasn’t paying attention, mould and fungus took over the leather.
These growths look a lot like the mess we returned to after a vacation when we first moved here. The Mold Disaster of 2016 took months to fix and I still notice evidence of it when the weather changes.
Now I am feeling sad about the sofa and disappointed in myself for neglecting it for two months.
I’m quite certain I don’t want to move the old sofa to the new house. Even if I clean it well and get it into a climate controlled environment, I will be inoculating the new house with the same mould spores that make me sick here. Nope.
RIP, Sofa: March 2006 – August 2023.
