Loving The Imperfections In Your Home

I said that I had a funny story about how we ended up with the playroom sofa.  We got that sofa about four years ago.   At the time, we had a leather sofa that we had owned nearly seven years, which was a little after we got married.  It was the most expensive piece of furniture we had ever purchased.
Well, my toddler son wrote all over one of the seat cushions with an ink pen.  I was mortified!

Thankfully, even though at the time of purchase we didn't have a kid, we got some sort of extended protection plan where they would come out and remove any ink marks in the leather or completely replace it if they couldn't remove the marks.  The guy comes out, but he can't remove the ink.

Bummer.

But the company honored the warranty!  We literally had about 2 months left on the seven year warranty, and they honored it.  Thankfully I had kept the paperwork for all that time because they said they wouldn't honor the warranty without it.

 I love the company to this day because of that.  I was afraid that they would find some sort of loophole to get out of it, but they didn't.  Unfortunately, seven years later, the sofa had been discontinued, but they gave us a credit for the original cost of the leather sofa minus the value of the damaged one if we wanted to keep it.   I was able to find a sofa (which we currently use in the playroom), love seat, and chair set that was heavily marked down and used the credit to purchase the set.  I think I only had to pay for delivery and another protection plan on the new set.  Woohoo!

(The Sofa, 11 years later)

We decided to keep the original sofa because, well, it's leather, we really loved it, and it had a matching love seat.  I can't deny that I was distraught over the ink marks.  There were several.  Thankfully, they were limited to one seat cushion.  Over the years the ink marks have been worn away by use of the sofa.  Today, the sofa isn't perfect, but I've come to appreciate it's imperfections.  It's slowly developing a time-worn patina that people pay good money for.  Except it comes from real life. 

It's easy to be attracted to the shiny and new.  We can be quick to toss the imperfect, the worn, and the damaged.  But I try to remind myself that it's better if we can see beyond the imperfection to the inherent value.  It applies to things, but more importantly to people because we have to see each other's inherent value beyond visible inperfections.  Had we been quick to toss that sofa because of an imperfection, it would have been a waste.  I am so glad we kept it because, eleven years later it's the most favorite piece of furniture I own.  And it's perfectly imperfect.

Wow, I didn't plan on getting this deep about a sofa, haha!  I'll be back to share the art station I'm working on.  If you have a toddler and a sofa, go put up those ink pens!