AUVCAS Armchair Caddy Review: A Pocket for Everything

When I lost the television remote down the side of my lift chair for the third time in one week, I fished it out with a broom handle and a flashlight, sat back down, and ordered the AUVCAS armchair caddy before I could talk myself out of it. That was April. Seven months later the thing is still on the right arm of my chair, still holding the same four items, and I have not gone digging in that gap since.

I am 72 and I live in Gastonia, North Carolina. My chair is a MCombo power lift recliner I bought in February, and it sits by the front window next to the television. Walt, my husband, has the couch. The chair is mine, and everything I want for an afternoon of television has to be within reach of it without me leaning down and feeling around in the dark. Reaching into the crack of a chair is a small thing that gets old fast. The AUVCAS caddy is a plain fabric organizer with pockets. It is not exciting. But it fixed a nuisance I had been living with for years, and I want to tell you exactly what it does, and where it let me down.

How I've Used It

The listing says to place the end with the organizer inside and underneath your couch cushions to hold it in place. I tried that first, and on my chair it did not work. A lift recliner's seat cushion is a tight fitted piece that slides forward when the chair lifts, and I was not going to jam a fabric flap into a mechanism that has to move. So I draped it over the right armrest instead, with the flap hanging down the outside of the arm, and the silicone netting on the back did the rest. That was in April. It has been there ever since.

The arm of a lift recliner is padded and wider than the arm of an ordinary recliner, and the caddy is listed at 34.5 inches long and 13 inches wide, so there is plenty of it to hang down on both sides. I fold the excess under on the outside. It weighs next to nothing, about 120 grams, so it does not pull the slipcover out of shape and I never notice it is there until I reach for something.

Every morning I carry my coffee in, sit down, and put my phone in one of the small pockets. My reading glasses go in the next one over. The television remote goes in the pocket closest to the front, where my hand falls naturally, and a pen goes in the last one because I write things down all day, grocery lists mostly, and I got tired of hunting for a pen in the kitchen drawer.

What the Five Pockets Actually Hold

There are five compartments. One is a large pocket across the front, meant for newspapers, magazines and books, and four are small pockets lined up behind it. I use the large one for my crossword book when I am not working in it, and for the church bulletin and whatever mail I have not dealt with yet. The small pockets hold the remote, the glasses, the pen and the phone, which is exactly four. I use all five, which I did not expect when I ordered it.

The pockets are sized for what they were meant for. A standard television remote slips in without a fight. Reading glasses folded up fit fine. My phone fits in a small pocket, and it is a snug fit with the case still on, so if you carry one of the large phones in a wallet case, measure it against the pocket before you count on it. The pen pocket is a pen pocket. Nothing more.

I measured before I ordered, the way I measure everything. The whole thing is listed at 11.81 inches deep by 7.48 inches high and less than an inch thick when it lies flat, and the large pocket runs the full 13 inch width. My crossword book is 8 and a half by 11 and it drops in with room on either side. What surprised me was the small pockets. I laid my reading glasses on the kitchen table and measured them folded, a little over five inches across the arms, and they go in and out without my having to wiggle them. Karen, my daughter, has a bigger phone than mine. When she was over in June she tried it in the second pocket and it went in, though not deep, and she said she would not trust it if she were leaning the chair back.

One thing I want to be clear about. My lift chair's own hand remote does not go in the caddy. That remote is on a cord and it stays in the side pocket the chair came with, where it has always been. If I put it in the caddy I would be dragging the cord across my lap every time the chair moved. The caddy is for the things that have no home of their own.

How It Stays Put, and When It Doesn't

The back of the caddy is silicone non-slip netting, and that is the part doing the work. On a padded fabric armrest it grips well enough that I can drop a remote into a pocket from a few inches up and the whole thing does not shift. It has not slid off the arm once in seven months, and it has not dumped anything on the floor.

But it does move. If I lean hard on the right armrest to push myself up, or if I reach across it at a bad angle, the AUVCAS caddy creeps forward an inch or two and I have to pull it back. Not a big deal, and it has never come close to falling off, but it is not fixed in place and I would not describe it as fixed. If you are somebody who plants an elbow on the armrest and leans, expect to straighten it now and then. That is the honest version.

The first week I tested it without meaning to. I keep a coaster on the armrest, and one evening I knocked it and reached over hard to catch it before it went behind the chair, which shoved the whole caddy forward toward the footrest, maybe three inches. I pulled it back and it stayed where I put it. Since then I have learned to push up from the back of the armrest, near where the arm meets the back of the chair. Push down near the front, where the caddy hangs over the edge, and you will move it. Push at the back and nothing happens. That is not in the listing and nobody told me, so I am telling you.

Seven Months In: What Held Up and What Did Not

The fabric is holding up. The listing describes the material as pongee with a foam layer, a non-woven backing and the silicone netting, and after seven months of daily use, dust, cracker crumbs and a pen that leaked a little, it looks about the way it did in April. I wipe it with a damp cloth every couple of weeks. No seams have opened, the pockets have not stretched out, and the netting has not peeled.

Speaking of the damp cloth, I have not put it in the washing machine. The listing does not tell me to, and I am not going to be the one to find out what a dryer does to silicone netting. Two weeks ago I took everything out, wiped both sides with a cloth and a little dish soap, and let it dry flat on the kitchen counter overnight. It was back on the chair before my morning coffee. The pen leak was my own doing, a ballpoint I left uncapped for the better part of a week, and it came out with the cloth without leaving a mark on the fabric.

What did not hold up as well is my expectation that the large pocket would stay flat. Put a folded newspaper in it and the pocket sags forward, because there is no stiffener in it. It still holds, but it hangs. I stopped putting the whole paper in and started putting in just the section I am reading.

The other thing I would change is the depth of the small pockets. They are right for a remote and a folded pair of glasses, but the large pocket is generous enough that a paperback slides down into it and I have to fish for it. That is a small complaint about a small product, and I would still buy it again.

What I Compared It To Before I Bought

I looked at three things before I ordered. The first was doing nothing, which had been my approach for four years. The second was a small side table. I have one, and it is two steps from the chair, which is two steps too many when the remote goes off during the weather report. The third was a sofa arm tray, the kind with a flat top that sits over the arm. I have seen them on a shelf in a store here in Gastonia and on a friend's chair at church. I have never owned one.

But I will tell you what really decided it, and it was not any of those three. The old brown recliner I had before this one, the manual one that went to the church yard sale in February, had a handle on the side and a pocket sewn into the outside of the arm. It was small, the size of a TV guide, and it held a remote and nothing else. I used it for fifteen years without ever thinking about it. When the MCombo came in February there was no such pocket, only the side pocket for its own corded hand remote. I did not realize how much I would miss that sewn pocket until it was gone. The AUVCAS caddy is that sewn pocket, only bigger, with four small ones beside it, and I can take it off and put it back.

What settled it for me was the pockets. A tray gives you a flat place to set a cup and a remote down, and a remote set down on a flat place slides off the moment you tilt the chair back. I wanted something that holds. If what you want is a place for a cup of coffee, this is not it, and you should look at the tray instead. But if you want the remote, the glasses, the pen and the phone to stay where you put them while the chair reclines, the pockets are the point.

Seven months of daily use, four small pockets, and I have not once gone digging in the gap between the cushion and the arm.

Who This Is For

This is for anyone who sits in the same chair every day and keeps the same handful of things beside it: a remote, glasses, a pen, a phone. It is for people who are tired of patting the cushion and feeling down the side of the chair. If you have a recliner with a padded fabric arm, or a sofa arm, or a chair with an arm wide enough to drape something over, it will do what it says. It is also a small enough thing to try before you go rearranging the living room around a side table.

One thing I will say plainly, because I am not a nurse and I am not a therapist and I do not want to sound like one. If you are recovering from a surgery or a fall, or if getting in and out of a chair has gotten harder lately, talk to your doctor or a physical or occupational therapist about what is safe for your chair and your body before you add anything to it. A pocket organizer is not a safety device. It just holds your glasses.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want something rigid. A sofa arm tray with a flat top will hold a cup and a plate, and this will not. I have seen those in stores and I have never owned one, so I will not pretend to compare them beyond the obvious. One is a flat surface and one is a bag with pockets. If you eat in your chair and need somewhere to set a plate down, buy the tray.

Skip it if your chair's arm is narrow, or leather, or the sort that is really a thin wooden rail. The grip comes from the silicone netting pressing against a soft surface, and a hard slick arm is not what it was made for. And skip it if you want the tuck-under style the listing describes, because on a lift chair whose seat cushion travels, that is not a job I would take on. The listing says it fits most sofas, chairs and recliners. I believe most. Not all.