How a Stretch Slipcover Saved My Favorite Chair From Coffee Spills

I spilled a cup of coffee on the arm of my new lift chair about three weeks after it came into the house. It was February, the chair sits by the front window where the light is good, and I set the mug down on the armrest the way I had done for fifteen years on the old recliner. The mug tipped. Coffee ran down the side of the arm and into the seam. I got it up with a damp cloth and it never stained, but I sat there afterward thinking about how close that was. The next week I ordered the Easy-Going stretch recliner slipcover. That was March. It has been on the chair ever since.

I am 72, I live in Gastonia, North Carolina, and I bought a MCombo lift recliner in February after asking Dr. Patel whether a lift chair made sense for me. My knees are stiff in the morning and after I have been sitting a while, and getting up out of a low, soft seat was the hard part of my day. I measured the space by the window and the doorway before I ordered anything, and I measured the chair too, because I read the tag on everything that comes into this house. That chair is the most expensive piece of furniture I own. I was not going to let a coffee cup be the end of it.

The Easy-Going cover comes in four pieces, not one. There is a piece for the seat and back, two arm pieces, and a piece for the footrest. Each piece has a label sewn into it, and the two marked ARM are the armrest pieces, which sounds obvious until you are standing there with four pieces of stretch fabric in your hands trying to work out which end is up. Karen came over and we had it on in about twenty minutes the first time. The whole thing weighs a little over two pounds, so I could have managed it alone if I had needed to.

The fabric is 80 percent polyester and 20 percent spandex, and that is the whole idea behind it. It pulls over the cushions and the elastic edges hold it in place. It fits the seat and the back snug. The listing says the cover fits a total sitting area of 23 to 34 inches, and I had my chair's measurement on the back of an envelope before I ordered, so I knew I was inside that. The arm pieces went on easy. The footrest piece is a little loose, and I will tell you that plainly, because it is the one part I notice when I look at the chair.

It fits the seat and back snug and hangs a little loose on the footrest. I would rather have that than a cover I have to fight every time I stand up.

Before I trusted it, I checked the one thing that mattered to me. I made sure the chair still lifts and reclines freely with the cover on it. It does. The fabric stays clear of the lift mechanism underneath and clear of the cord on my hand remote, and I have had no trouble with either. I also keep the remote cord in the chair's side pocket now, which I should have done from the start. The cover has not bunched up or slid out from under me, and I am in that chair most of the afternoon with a crossword or the television on.

I wash it on gentle about every three weeks and hang it to dry. It goes back on the same way it came off, and after all these months it has not gone thin at the elbows of the arm pieces. There is no zipper to wrestle with and nothing to tie. For a woman my age with stiff knees, that counts for something. I do not have to get down on the floor to put a chair cover back together.

Here is what it does not do. It is not water resistant. The listing says so and I will say so. If you knock over a full mug, the fabric gives you a moment to grab a dish towel, not a barrier you can walk away from. It also does not make an old chair look like a new one. It covers the flattened spot where my arm rests and the small marks on the arms, and it looks tidy in the window. If what you want is something you can leave a spill sitting on until morning, that is a different product. I have never owned a waterproof recliner cover, only seen them in listings and on a friend's chair at church, so I am not the person to ask about those.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Measure the chair before you order, not after. Write the sitting area measurement on an envelope and keep it in your purse when you go to the computer. Then read the size range on the listing and make sure your number sits inside it. I have returned things in my life because I skipped that step and I am too old to keep doing it.

Have somebody with you the first time you put it on, not because it is hard but because four pieces of stretchy fabric on a chair for the first time is easier with four hands. Then check the chair afterward with your own eyes. Lift it, recline it, watch where the fabric goes near the mechanism. And before you spend a nickel on anything for a lift chair, ask your doctor or a physical or occupational therapist about the chair itself and about fit and safety, especially if you have had a surgery or a fall. I asked Dr. Patel before I bought the lift chair and I am glad I did. A slipcover is a small decision next to that one, and nobody should take my word for what is safe for you.