My parents had a fairly simple living room set when I was a kid. A sofa and two matching chairs with very plain tweed-like upholstery. It had fixed cushions and sat in that room for a very long time. No amount of kids jumping up and down on it seemed to make any impact on how comfortable it was. It did, however, eventually start to sag in the springs. Nothing last forever, after all, especially not something that has received heavy every-day use.

Still, it remained there for a long time. It was there when my parents bought the most dangerous furniture contraption of the day, the sofabed. I’m pretty sure that was a repurposed bear-trap. Once it was safely tucked away in itself, it was inert but about as comfortable as a, well, as a pile of scrap metal with a cushion on it. Once it was folded out as a bed, it was more like a very harrowing trampoline. And in between, at the pulling out or putting away stage, it was frighteningly dangerous, threatening to snap you into it or perhaps just take off one of your arms.
It was more or less indestructible, though. It hung around long after anyone was willing to open it. And the other sofa also remained, sagging a bit more every year, but still more or less just as good as it ever was.

Over the last ten years, I have had two sofas. The first one was a low-riding huge floppy mess that was very comfortable but threatened to suffocate you and it was very hard to stand up from it. I also discovered, very soon after buying it, that the clips that maintained the spacing between the springs were breaking. In fact, they were all broken by the time I flipped the monster over and looked. But I fixed it with twine. I tied each spring to its neighbour in many different locations and that fixed that problem.
However, one day I noticed the back of the sofa had a bump in it. Quick investigation determined that it was a piece of wood. A main framing member spanning the back of the sofa had broken in half and was now bouncing around inside there.
It seemed to be time for a new sofa, so one was purchased but I didn’t want to get rid of the old one. I have a basement, after all. But I had a bit of a problem. I mentioned before that it is difficult to get things in and out of my basement. Well, the sofa, stood on end, was several inches taller than the ceiling, so that made it impossible to get it into the stairwell. It would have then been impossible to get it out of the stairwell at the bottom. So, I started taking it apart.
Such things are not meant to be taken apart. They are obviously meant to be thrown in a garbage truck and crushed into oblivion. But I did it, anyway. I was not impressed to see that the broken piece of wood at the back was split at a giant knot, so it never had any structural strength. In fact, all the wood in it seemed to have been leftover rejects from making pallets. Furthermore, there was not a screw in the thing. Everything was held together with staples. Not one or two staples, either, but every “joint” had around 40 staples clustered in one square inch.
Anyway, I broke it apart and tossed it down the stairs. Then I put it back together and fixed everything as I went.

The new sofa came and it had recliners on each end. It looked much nicer than the previous one. I was somewhat surprised that, within a year, one of the handles used to activate the recliner broke off through normal use. On close examination, it seemed to be designed to break, since its weakest point was exactly where all the strain would be. When the second one broke, I replaced them with wooden levers I quickly made.

Within two years, bolts and nuts started mysteriously appearing on the floor underneath the sofa. I did flip it over and try to determine where they belonged but I’ve never successfully found a home for any of them.

After three years, the recliners were about an inch and a half lower than the middle fixed seat. Shortly thereafter, the cushions at the back started to split at the seams. The arms felt like they’d fall off. When the chair was reclined, the bottom thumped on the floor and scraped along it.

And after four years, the springs seem to have broken. I turn it over and determine the springs have not broken but the clips that attach them to the frame have pulled out. I took a picture, because they were attached to the plywood frame with staples.
Clearly, someone should go to furniture factories and break all of their staplers.
I don’t really want to buy a new sofa. I want to buy an old one. And it’s not that I expect an old one will actually be better, but just that when it breaks or falls apart, I can justify it because of its age.