Put New Life Into Old Furniture

• What: Sofa Refresh
• When: Cushions no longer hold their shape
• Why: Cheaper than replacing furniture
• Where: Amazon

Do your kids or pets maul your furniture? Have you looked at your beloved sofa one day and realized it isn’t the same furniture you fell in love with years ago? 

Air Lite Eco-Friendly Recycled Polyester Fiberfill on Amazon

If your kids or pets, or as in our case, both, abuse your sofa cushions on a regular basis, there’s hope. Our kids love to use the sofa cushions as fodder for forts, to sit on top of instead of against, or as extra cushioning for things I don’t want to think about much less discuss publicly. After years of mistreatment, our cushions looked less than robust. I fluff the cushions on a regular basis, which serves only to attract someone or something to squish them into unappealing shapes as soon as possible.

My sofa cushions never stood upright and looked like this all the time.

I had no idea you could do much about this sad state of affairs until my very astute friend enlightened me when I complained about the cushions sagging. It turns out you can buy fiberfill online in both natural and polyester. I did a little research to figure out amounts, then ordered two five pound bags (for whatever reason, the ten pound bag cost more) of the cheaper option to try it out.

After stuffing the cushions, the sofa looks like this.

Lo and behold, it made an enormous difference in the appearance of our twenty year old couch. I unzipped the covers, left everything inside, and stuffed in the fiberfill. I originally used five pounds on each of our two long back cushions. But after a few days, I removed some from one of the now too fluffy back supports and added it to the arm cushions.

My kids still sit on top of the cushions (as do the pets), but they hold their shape now.

My kids and pets still contort the cushions on a regular basis (and probably appreciate the extra fluff), but now it doesn’t squash the sofa into a pancake that requires effort before I can relax. So we all end up much happier, for a minimal amount of effort and expense.