Leather sofa owners - come and give advice and reassurance to a new owner!

[MummyPenguin]

Right, took delivery of a new leather suite on Monday. (Dark brown colour.) Very nice it is too. Paranoia has set in though. Last night, DH caught DS1 eating a plate of chicken that had been left over from a KFC, and caught him wiping his hands on the sofa Luckily, DH was walking into the room just as DS did this, so was able to wipe it straight away and it's fine. Today I sat down, got up and realised there was a greasy looking mark where my arm had been. Then I remembered putting some baby oil gel on my skin after my shower at the gym! Luckily, again, dealt with it straight away, and it's fine. We are drumming into the kids about no eating on the new furniture etc. and I've now realised that I should be careful with creams/oils on my skin if I'm wearing a t-shirt or vest or shorts etc.

I suppose what I want to ask is how worried do I need to be about spills, marks etc? We have the leather cleaning kit that the store gave us, and DH is going to do the condition/protecting treatment tonight. What is likely to mark it? What do I need to/not need to worry about?

Will be grateful for tips from other leather suite owners!

We got this one in Land Of Leather's January sale. We got the 3 & 2 seaters for £699 & only had to wait about 4 weeks. It's had just about everything spilled on it by 2 year old dd & 6 month old ds slobbers on it regularly. To start with I was paranoid but now I just vacuum it with the soft brush attachment & take a leather wipe over it once a day when I 'do' the living room.

Dh is practically a vegetarian & is still not happy at having a leather suite but with 2 small kids our old fabric suite was constantly manky.

My brother has black leather sofas and his 3 tiny boys are like something from Lord of the Flies at times. TBH I don't think anything BUT leather would cope, they always look smart.

J20BABY - As I said, we ordered it in the Easter sale and Land of Leather said to us that we wouldn't have it until the end of June, possibly into July. They also said that when we get a call from the warehouse, we have to accept delivery. On Saturday evening we got a call saying that they were bringing it on Monday!! We still had our old one in situ as we thought we had plenty of time to get rid of it. Luckily, DH managed to clear some space in the garage and it's out there. I think we're going to give it to one of the charities locally that take furniture. Mine is similar to yours J20, but yours has a slightly rounder shape. It's lovely, I can well understand you looking forward to it!

I've been a bit worried about my dogs and cat too. The dogs were always camped out on our old one, but we started stopping them, and since we've had the leather one they've been very good and stayed clear of it. I still keep a beady eye on the mog though as he used to have a go at the side of our old one. He'd only have to do it once with the leather and there would be scratches. To be honest, I don't let him in the lounge now. Must get him a scratching post.

oooh no, won't be letting the DC eat off it. I'm glad I didn't get a MN backlash when I mentioned that DS was eating KFC

Message withdrawn

i hope they do that with me mummypenguin

three years later still using the baby wipes and still looking great (the sofa not me....if only that was all it took!).