Eating dinner in front of the television is somewhat frowned upon as the ultimate concession to modern living, and something of an unsavoury practice that we like to somehow blame on the USA. It is seen as another breakdown in traditional family values, as all members of the household would routinely gather at meal time to talk about how their day has been. It is also a breakdown in traditional meal time etiquette. But quite apart from it sometimes killing two birds with one stone, in terms of fitting everything we want to into our busy lives, eating dinner on the sofa in front of the television is also very occasionally a lovely thing to do.
First and foremost your thoughts should be with your sofa and looking after it. Of course some sofas will be more practical than others in terms of potential spillages, but ideally, you want to limit this as much as possible to those special occasions when you are feeling particularly cosy and indulgent, or for something like the football being moved for TV coverage and it clashes with meal time.
When is the right time to eat dinner on the sofa?
It’s unlikely you are going to head for the sofa to eat when you are entertaining guests, or for your Sunday lunch. And more formal meals such as Christmas Day or meeting your partner’s parents for the first time, might be better served around a well presented table.
The choice of food might also come into play. The sofa is the go-to place for a takeaway, as this pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the premise that “tonight Matthew, we are going to be extremely lazy”. But then you want to avoid eating something that has lakes of sauce, for obvious reasons. Likewise, sawing away at a tough steak might not be ideal on the sofa, and something fiddly like building fajitas is only going to end in disaster.
Some people are well prepared for these such occasions, however. You might have the ‘occasional table’ you can quickly whip out and set up in front of your favourite TV show, or you might make do with a cushion to stabilise your plate, but either way, sofa maintenance should be of primary importance.
Looking after your sofa
For this reason, caution is advised when involving the kids in TV dinners. Not only are they less careful and aware of the perils of eating on the sofa, their attention is most likely to be on the TV and not on the Ketchup that is about to drip on your new four-seater sofa. Dogs should also be banished to the kitchen for the duration of your decadent feast.
In our experience it is important to put a limit on TV dinners, much as they are enjoyable. Before you know it, the kids will see it as normal and you won’t always be there to shriek in horror as something greasy slips down the back of a seat cushion. A TV dinner on the sofa should be reserved as an occasional treat and only done under strict supervision.
Sofa maintenance is paramount and while our range of armchairs, sofas, corner sofas and chaise sofas are built to last, they also need looking after. So keep your standards high, limit the TV dinners to those special occasions and your sofa will continue to look after you.
