Part One, The Sofa.
I have worked long and hard at selecting furniture that is beautiful but will absolutely stand up to my two boys (and three LARGE dogs). I’ve put together personal favourites that I have found to be really durable yet functional and still stylistic. Momma can absolutely have nice things and messy boys at the same time.
Leather
My top recommendation is to go with a thick and distressed leather. We had a Restoration Hardware Lancaster sofa for years and it held up to anything. Scratches happened (and are easily buffed out with leather conditioner available from RH), spills, many moves … you name it. We only eventually had to sell it as it was too large for our current house. We did buy this sofa second hand which saved as a ton of money and it was already well worked in for us.
Urban Barn sells a more reasonably priced sofa that has a similar thick distressed option that we did have at one point (again bought used) called the Preston. I don’t have a lot of great photos as I was mostly in the daze of parenting very young kids at that time we owned it.
Any leathers that are higher end (think soft and buttery) are a nightmare to maintain and best left for those single folks without kids or pets who have dinner parties and spend Sunday mornings sleeping in sipping coffee until noon. We are not those people.
We are these people.
Fabric
Alternatively you can go the fabric route but you want to pick durable fabric (high rub count), and patterns that will conceal spills and stains because it’s not IF it’s WHEN bad things happen. I will often take a sample of the fabric home and spill juice, crunch goldfish crackers and coffee into it to see how well the fabric stands up. It’s not pretty but it really helps determine if this fabric is going to hold up to my real life. I’d rather find out on the front end that crunched in goldfish crackers turns the sofa orange than after I have spent a bunch of money. We have had a lot of success with fabric sofas from GUS Modern as their fabric seems quite commercial grade it in it’s ability to stand-up to children and exhausted parents with unsteady coffee mugs.
We have recently purchased a Montauk sofa for our smaller open concept living room. It’s is gorgeous and we customized the pillows so there were more solid larger pillows and not a lot of throw pillows as they tend to become projectiles in my house. The fabric on this one went through my strict Goldfish Cracker test and passed; however, it is linen. We have only had it a few months now so the jury is out on how well it will hold up to our full life.
I have a sneaking suspicion living as close to the sea as we do, a leather sofa will be in our future with wet dogs constantly sneaking on the couch for their post-swim snoozing.
He’s too adorable to be mad at for long.
Next up: Dining Room table and chair options that will stand up to mass forking and other disasters at the hands of toddlers!
modheritage.com 