I spend much of my day on the couch: working, reading, playing video games, hanging out with my son, having coffee. I’m on the couch even as I’m writing this. It even opens up into a goddam bed when I’m feeling particularly lazy, like right now.
I’m also a klutz. The couch-bed makes a coffee table useless and out of reach. A side table would be ideal, but my apartment is narrow and it wouldn’t fit. So I’ve been balancing my mugs and glasses on the fabric arm of the couch, or on the windowsill. It’s stupid and precarious, and it leads to exactly what you’d imagine happening.
Lo and behold, this problem has been solved for ages, in the form of little tables that go over the arms of the couch. A friend of mine started making them (with a few improvements) and selling them on his Etsy store and I immediately bought one.
The If You Let Me Love You, I’ll Never Let You Go couch accoutrement is a real chunk of wood that’s been properly lacquered, and has a groove cut out for a mug/glass/bowl and a pen. Kerfwork (the designer) built it to spec with the measurements of my couch, so it fits perfectly.
The thing’s a beaut, and has some nice touches, like the wood “patch” that Kerfwork added on the side:
I also really like the signature inlay thing that’s almost hidden:
This mini-table is such an obvious, pretty solution to a problem I’ve had forever. I love it.
The one man operation that is Kerfwork will not admit to me whether he knew that the acronym for this little couch-table was I(YL)M LYIN(LY)G. That suggests to me that he knew, but the man is an enigma.
Go buy yourself a couch-table thingy, or any of his other great wares (if only I had space for that beautiful coffee table). And hey, in the weirdest turn imaginable for this site, Kerfwork was kind enough to create a coupon for Fraudsters’ readers. If you enter FRAUDSTERSFAN at checkout, he’ll give you 20% off. This is probably the only tangible good thing that we here at the Almanac will ever do for you.
Or, you know, go face the existentialist hell that is the Ikea checkout line and buy a plastic side table. Your call.
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