Why We Got Rid of All the Furniture in Our Living Room to Make Room for One 9-Foot Sofa
A few years ago my wife and I made the decision to totally revamp our living room for our growing family. Our kitchen is long and narrow, and when our middle daughter started eating solids, we couldn’t fit her high chair in the kitchen and still be able to walk through, so we needed to turn our living room into a multipurpose play, eat, and live space. In order to do this, we had to reduce the number of furniture items in the living area and reconfigure the space. Part of that process included swapping our 6-foot sofa, chairs, and ottoman for one 9-foot family sofa. Here’s why it was one of the best things we could have done:
Why We Got a Bigger Family Sofa
We bought a secondhand 9-foot Jasper sectional sofa from Room and Board, which is mid-century modern in design and comes in a variety of fabric choices. We love that the cushion covers are removable and can be dry cleaned. (We have three girls and have dry cleaned them multiple times!) This larger sofa has worked so much better in our small living room because:
- It makes use of the whole wall: The bigger sofa makes the best use of the long wall in the living room.
- It gave us room for the dining table: Before we had chairs on the opposite wall and an ottoman in the middle of the room, which left no room for a dining table. Getting rid of those furniture pieces made space for us to put a small round tulip table (seen in this post) on the wall across from the sofa. Bonus: when we have people over and need additional seating in the living room, we can just swing the chairs from the dining table around to face the sofa!
- It frees up space for play: Our sofa has a right-corner chair which serves the same purpose as our ottoman used to, but doesn’t obstruct our girls from being able to play in the center of the room.
- It’s made the small living room feel so much bigger: Too much furniture in a small room can make the space feel cluttered and even smaller than it is. Now we don’t notice the size of the room, because there’s enough space for everything we need.
- It matches the rhythms of our family: I love that my wife and I can lounge and read while our girls play on the floor right in front of us. I love that we can all cuddle up together on the couch and watch movies. I’m also 6 feet tall, and it’s nice to have a comfortable space to stretch out. With this sofa, I have plenty of wiggle room!
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