Last month, I got rid of an old reclining sofa that my wife and I purchased 24 years ago. At the time, it was an elegant black-blue leather sofa that reclined in a special way that it could be placed safely next to the wall. I say the color of the sofa is black-blue because I always assumed the color of the furniture was black, while my wife insists that it is blue. This debate on color was never settled, but I can assure you that family history protocol will dictate that I was wrong and my wife is correct.

This elegant sofa survived two houses, two adults, one maturing kid, one dog, several cats, some legendary get-togethers, and weekly family movie nights. During most of this time, we never saw what our guests saw; this couch of ours was getting old, worn, and becoming an eyesore. We didn’t start admitting this to ourselves until my wife came across a newish sofa being sold at an estate sale for too good of a price to pass up. We eventually faced the truth when we found we couldn’t even get rid of that old couch on Facebook Marketplace for free nor donate it local charity groups. In the end, we had no choice but to hire movers to take the couch to the local city landfill.

I won’t say I’m really going to miss the old sofa. After you’ve owned and used the same sofa for a quarter century, it’s certainly fine to move on. Plus, the newish sofa we bought at the estate sale to replace it is so much nicer. What I can tell you is the replacement sofa is brown, and my wife agrees with me on this observation. So goodbye black-blue sofa!

A version of this story was first published at bryanruby.com.