Wills, cash, porn, weed: The secrets that lurk in sofas
Some people might have been surprised to hear that Aretha Franklin kept the handwritten will for her estate, initially estimated to be worth up to $80 million, hidden under her sofa cushions.
But some respect for the Queen of Soul, please. It was not unusual for members of her generation to stash their important documents or cash under a mattress or in a cookie jar.
“I think this had to do with the way Aretha approached money. She insisted she be paid in cash and she put that money in her purse and took it onstage with her,” says Angela Neal-Barnett, clinical psychologist, professor at Kent State University and author of “Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman’s Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic and Fear.”
“It dated back to when she was on the early circuit with her father and saw how Black musicians were treated,” Neal-Barnett adds. “Keeping her will under the sofa may have been her way of feeling in control of her money.”
Franklin also had a fear of flying, so she always traveled by bus. “She may have feared she would end up penniless,” Neal-Barnett says. “She was told by the legal profession that she needed a will, but she did it her way.”
Money often turns up in or under couch cushions, whether on purpose or after spilling out of a purse or pants pocket. A California woman found $36,000 in the cushions of a sofa she scored free on Craigslist. Cashstrapped college students have been known to scour their sofas for loose change at the end of the month, says Neal-Barnett. Plenty of other stuff turns up there, too.
STUFF THAT FALLS OUT OF SOFAS
“Sofas are the repository for many of our stories,” says Mark Rubin, who owns multiple 1-800GOT-JUNK franchises. Rubin says he has seen a wide assortment of stuff fall out of sofas, including porn, sex toys, alcohol, weed, food and letters. Everyday items, including keys, jewelry, toys, photos, pens and ticket stubs, usually end up there by accident, says Rubin. “People snooze on the sofa and these small things get lost,” he says.
Downsizers and cleaning services report that alongside the stray Goldfish crackers and pennies, they have found dangling diamond earrings, gift cards, uncashed checks and even steak knives when sofa cushions are removed. Remote control missing? It’s probably wedged in a crevice in your couch. In some parts of the country, junk haulers find handguns under there. Rubin says a job in Washington, D.C., once turned up a cache of intricate blueprints stashed under a cushion. “It didn’t say top secret,” says Rubin. “But how would I know?”
Libby Kinkead, co-owner of Potomac Concierge, a move management and downsizing firm, says, “You just never know where people are going to tuck things away for safekeeping.” (Her firm once found a dead cat in the freezer. Someone had stashed it there for later disposal.)
But back to sofas.
“If you’ve lost anything, the couch should be one of the first places you look,” says Melissa
Homer, chief cleaning expert at Microfiber Wholesale. It was part of Homer’s previous job, as the chief cleaning officer at MaidPro, to instruct cleaning teams about the proper way to vacuum a sofa. She says her staff watched videos that showed techniques and instructed them to leave any treasures found inside on the coffee table with a note. Legos were a chief nemesis, often getting stuck in vacuum crevice tools.
“I remember our cleaners having a fun running gag for a while, posting on our private Facebook group all the little Lego men they’d saved from being stuck in their hoses after vacuuming couches,” she says. “They would post photos of them with either sad or happy faces after their rescue.”
And allowing Doritos crumbs or other food to pile up in your sofa can also lead to unwanted visitors. Homer says one cleaner found a cache of acorns and rat poison under some cushions. “The customer was battling pests in the house and instead of eating the poison, the mice were stashing it for a winter snack in different warm, cozy spots in their house, like the sofa,” Homer says.
Franklin’s will reminded Homer of her own family. “My mom until last year had been keeping her will and other important documents in a cookie tin,” Homer says. “In Aretha Franklin’s generation, moms and dads kept important stuff tucked in envelopes in drawers or cookie jars.”
The habit speaks to people’s larger insecurities, Neal-Barnett adds.
“Looking beyond Aretha, I think there are people still around who look back to the [Great] Depression and do not trust things, like banks,” she says. “We have people who still hide their money in their mattress or other places. People’s approach to money is often transmitted down from generation to generation. If you grew up with someone with this approach to money, you may be likely to emulate what they did.”
Quintin Tate knows that as an interior designer, it’s his job to see things from the perspective of his client. That guiding force – to put the vision of the client first – was recently put to the test when, 10 minutes into a consultation for a sunroom, Tate’s client described the magenta-based color palette before him as “brown and green.”
Tate knew that he and his client were literally not seeing the same thing. The client later confirmed, after a trip to the eye doctor, that he was red-green colorblind.
Tate, a lover of lush interiors and rich hues, had to take color out of the picture, or at least those not singing to his client. The exercise in shifting perspective helped sharpen his design chops, he says, and his empathy and communication skills.
“When you learn that you have to find a shared vision, despite the challenges of color, it’s time for you to really kick your problemsolving skills into play,” says Tate, the owner of North Carolina-based Twenty Sevyn Interiors.
Colorblindness affects 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females in the United States, though as one very famous viral dress can attest, color is subjective even for those without a diagnosis. Aging eyes see color differently. Language, commerce and culture layer meaning on color. One company labels the paint chip lake blue, another deems it denim.
We spoke with five interior designers who shared surprisingly universal wisdom gleaned from working with colorblind clients.
TELL A STORY
Without the option of color to give his colorblind client’s sunroom the warmth he desired, Tate pivoted to the idea of place, one the client associates with warmth: the beach.
He created a clean, coastal sanctuary, anchored by a patterned rug in cream and oceanic blue, a color his red-green colorblind client could see. He found pillows with silhouettes of coral and seaweed, and covered the couch with a creamy durable fabric that conveys both yacht-club luxury and seaworthy ruggedness. The effect is a bit nautical and a bit beachy: a coastal combo that exudes warmth. His client couldn’t see the green leaves of the large potted plant Tate selected, but he could appreciate their spiky angles, shadows, sense of movement and nod to nature.
JOIN THE DARK SIDE
Black is technically not a color; a black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes. In other words, colorblind clients can see it. And if it’s up to Miami-based interior designer Ashleigh Hue, everyone would see it as a versatile go-to.
Hue hasn’t found a detail she doesn’t love in black: fixtures, bedroom walls, kitchen islands.
“Black is often associated with elegance, sophistication and a sense of mystery. It has a timeless quality that can add a touch of drama and depth,” she says. “I can use it to create sleek and minimalist designs, and bold and edgy ones.”
Toronto-based interior designer Michael London knows that black can read as eerie or too masculine, but he encourages homeowners to not shy away from using it as a focal piece. He also likes it as a strong supporting character that helps other elements shine, whether it’s a black floor topped with a colorful rug or the veins and lines of a marble kitchen island.
COME TO YOUR SENSES
Texture is a classic element of design, one that designers lean into to engage their colorblind clients’ sense of touch.
When London learned that his luxury-seeking client was colorblind, he immediately shifted to seeing things in monochrome, which allowed him to focus on other elements. “The real challenge is: How do I make it an experience for that particular client?”
London says. “How can I give him distinctions and details he can truly enjoy?”
He chose a combination of hair-on-hide fabric and suede for the walls, paired with silk drapery. “Playing up the texture just adds more depth to the room,” he says. “We’re still working on the project now, and he’s loving the process because we’re still playing on texture and touch.”
London also considers smell and sound, prescribing scents and soundtracks for all his clients.
PICK A PATTERN
Patterns pack a visual punch equally powerful to color. “Colorblind clients still feel like they’re getting that pop – it’s just not a pop of color,” says Christina Kittelstad, a color consultant, home stager, painter and owner of Spiral Design Color Consulting in Lakewood, Colo. Patterned wallpaper and shapes playing off one another in pillows, furniture and rugs can all give a room depth and energy.
During a recent design for a colorblind client’s living space and art gallery, Houston-based interior designer Christopher Charles Evans packed in patterns on the hair-on-hide ottoman focal piece, in texture-rich pillows and a “lot of geometrical shapes going on with high contrast in color,” says the owner of ChristopherCharles Interiors and IndigoRED, LLC.
In that same client’s bedroom, patterns play nicely off each other, with lines and curves zinging from one pillow to the shapely “Space Age meets art deco” shiny light fixtures.
In his colorblind client’s bathroom, London constructed a pattern playground with flower petals in a painting harmonizing with the shapes of the room’s modern chandelier.
GET INTO SHAPE
Shapes speak volumes throughout the home of London’s colorblind client and in the designer’s own office. Curvy couches soften more angular features and give a sense of serpentine movement. “I love how [the couch] creates flow and allows the eye to both move through a space while offering a soft landing,” London says.
Repeating rectangles in the form of door frames add to that sense of rhythm as they lead from the client’s bathroom into the vanity and dressing room. Surrounded by textured wallpaper, in varying shades of brown, anchored by a travertine floor, with its own rectangular tiles, the hallway leads to a lit-frombehind mirror.
PUT IT IN NEUTRAL
Colorblind clients are sharply attuned to tone, and designers herald neutrals as the best way to capture these slight changes in saturation and depth. “My colorblind clients tell me they just feel safer with neutrals,” says Kittelstad. “You can’t go wrong really. Even if you mess up, it’s still probably not going to look bad.”
Neutrals offer a quick solution to the paralysis often associated with home projects of any scale, whether you can see color or not. “Sometimes you don’t want to take that risk, or maybe there’s a lot of that going on in your life,” Kittelstad says. “Neutral choices can keep it simple. There’s no denying that.”
MAKE IT WORK
Colorblind clients raise the bar on functionality, designers say, and underscore the ethos of all good design.
“The functionality of a space is the underpinning of effective and value-added interior design,” Evans says. “A space that has great function adds value, ease and order to the client’s environment and daily living.”
Common mistakes in function that Evans sees are: absence of linen closets in new construction; lack of storage; not using performance fabrics for high-use upholstered furniture; inadequate door and cabinetry swing directions; and sacrificing function for cost.
“No deal is good if you have to go out and buy a better version of it when it fails to perform,” Evans says.