How To Remove Chocolate From A Couch

So not last night but the night before I had what can only be described as a Couch Crisis.  It was an extremely tense 60 minutes, involving me, a chocolate easter egg and our brand new couch.  But, like pretty much everything that happens around here, it’s a story that makes for a fairly amusing blog post, so here we go with my tips on how to remove chocolate from a couch!

Step One:  Wait patiently for the gorgeous linen 3 seater chaise couch you’ve had your eye on since forever to come on sale and purchase it.

When the lovely and very helpful staff member asks if you’d like to purchase fabric protection for an additional $150, call your husband.  You see he sort of works in the fabric protection industry and can do it himself however he has a mildly irritating habit of saying he will do these things but somehow never seems to actually do them.  

So give him a quick call and ask if you should just go ahead with purchasing the fabric protection because he’s such a busy man and you don’t want to make life anymore difficult for him.  Which of course is frustrated wife code for ‘you and I both know it will never get done so I’m just going to purchase the damn fabric protection, ok?!’

Step Two:  Decline any additional purchases such as fabric protection because you have a very capable husband who can do it himself, thus saving you 150 bucks leaving you more money to spend on important things like shoes and handbags.

Step Three:  Wait 6 weeks for the couch to arrive.  

Don’t panic when you receive a call the day before the couch is finally due to arrive to inform you that, “The couch missed the truck from Melbourne and won’t be here until next week.”

Instead, calmly ask the person on the other end of the line how a couch can actually miss a truck? Is it a human waiting at a bus stop? No, it’s a couch. 

Step Four:  When the couch finally does arrive, spend A LOT of time reminding everyone in the house THAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE THEY TO EAT OR DRINK ON THE COUCH UNTIL IT THE FABRIC PROTECTION APPLIED.

Step Five:  Decide that after 5 weeks of waiting for the damn furniture fabric to be applied, it will be ok to inhale a couple of mini chocolate Easter Eggs while sitting on the very unprotected couch.

Step Six:  Grab three small chocolate eggs, eat two of them and wonder where the third one went.  

Watch TV for a bit, get up and notice a melted Easter Egg fall from the back of your shorts.

Step Seven: Turn around and discover two enormous pools of melted chocolate on the couch and realise that you must’ve sat on chocolate Easter Egg Number Three and now it’s melted ALL OVER THE COUCH!

Step Eight: Gasp, panic, google.  

Read something about making sure the linen cover slips have been pre-washed before you fling them in the washing machine, otherwise they’ll shrink.

Step Nine:  Head to the website where you purchased the couch from to check if the cover slips have been pre-washed

ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT THE WEBSITE IS DOWN BECAUSE THEY’RE DOING AN UPGRADE OF THEIR SITE.

Step Ten:  Text your cousin because your husband WHO STILL HASN’T APPLIED THE FABRIC PROTECTION is on a bloody plane and you can’t call him to have a whinge about the current chocolate crisis.

Step Eleven:  Frantically remove ALL THE COVER SLIPS on the couch, looking for some form of instructions/washing information.  

Find none, so grab a damp cloth and wipe the chocolate off the couch.

Step Twelve:  Throw the cover slip into the washing machine, whack it on ‘delicate’ cycle and pray to the couch gods that you don’t shrink the f*&ker.  

Now is also a good time to tell yourself that maybe that I Quit Sugar chick is onto something.  I mean what’s she got to worry about?  Spilling kale on her organic hemp filled bean bag?  

Step Thirteen:  Take a couple of photos of the carnage you’ve created in the living room while telling your daughter, “Don’t panic.  It’s not poo.  It’s chocolate.  No, Mummy did not poo her pants.  It’s chocolate.  Yes, I know it looks like poo, but it’s not.  IT’S CHOCOLATE.  I PROMISE!”

Step Fourteen:  Wait for the washing machine to finish, pull the linen cover slip out of the machine, check for chocolate stains and breath a huge sigh of relief when you discover WE’RE ALL CLEAR!

Step Fifteen:  Hang the cover over your new bar stools to dry.  

Don’t hang it outside because the last thing you need right now is for a bird to shit on it.  

Step Sixteen: Write a blog post about the linen cover

Adding at the end that after 48 hours of drying time the damn thing is still damp so you’re unable to confirm if you’ve shrunk it or not.

Step Seventeen:  Pour yourself a vodka and ask your readers if they’ve ever done anything AS STUPID AND AS STRESSFUL AS EATING CHOCOLATE ON A COUCH!