The survey was conducted as part of the launch for Australia’s scariest Sofa Swap, a competition giving Australians the chance to turn their sofa horror story into a fantastic story this Halloween. The grand prize winner will receive a $3,000 Fantastic Furniture gift card to make over their lounge room. The competition opens on October 14 and closes on November 8. Entrants will be required to share a picture of their sofa horror story on Instagram using the hashtag #scarysofaswap, and tag @FantasticFurniture OR by entering online HERE.
However, the survey unearthed some truly terrifying sofa statistics.
Whilst most Australians have made some attempt to clean their sofas, 44% say they’ve never had their sofa sanitised or professionally cleaned and 1.7 million Aussies have admitted to never having cleaned their sofas in any way. The study reports that more than one million Aussies have found poo or wee - courtesy of their child or pet - almost one million have found a dead animal brought in by their pet, and 30% of participants also admitted to having found insects beneath the cushions.
Check out the list of the 5 most disgusting things reportedly found in Australian sofas below.
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Top 5 most DISGUSTING things found in Aussie sofas
- Dropped food that has gone mouldy/has a bad odour (37%)
- Spilt drinks that have left a sticky residue (36%)
- Insects e.g. cockroaches, ants, fleas (30%)
- Sweaty or dirty socks (29%)
- A bone the dog buried in there (15%)
Check out the respondents stories below.
“A rat under the sofa. My cat kept clawing under there and I found it alive.”
“My very large mastiff hid part of a lamb bone in the couch and we only found it much later due to an odd odour.”
“Dead millipedes found when doing spring cleaning.”
“Our dogs are not allowed on the sofa but my daughter came over and asked what the smell was... we found a half chewed bone down the back. Yuck!”
“One day we kept smelling this like awful smell it smelled like a dead animal so we took the one cushion off and the smell appeared to be stronger so we figured maybe a small animal died there. We stuck our hand in a tiny hole and found a rotting dead mouse.”
But it wasn’t all bad news. Survey participants also reported the best things they had found in their sofa. These included missing TV remotes, money, mobile phones, car keys and lost jewellery!
