The strange — and mundane — things people hide in sofas

Some people might have been surprised to hear that Aretha Franklin kept the handwritten will for her estate, initially estimated to be worth up to $80 million, hidden under her sofa cushions.

But some respect for the Queen of Soul, please. It was not unusual for members of her generation to stash their important documents or cash under a mattress or in a cookie jar.

“I think this had to do with the way Aretha approached money. She insisted she be paid in cash and she put that money in her purse and took it onstage with her,” says Angela Neal-Barnett, clinical psychologist, professor at Kent State University and author of “Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman’s Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic and Fear.”

“It dated back to when she was on the early circuit with her father and saw how Black musicians were treated,” Neal-Barnett adds. “Keeping her will under the sofa may have been her way of feeling in control of her money.”

Franklin also had a fear of flying, so she always traveled by bus. “She may have feared she would end up penniless,” Neal-Barnett says. “She was told by the legal profession that she needed a will, but she did it her way.”

Money often turns up in or under couch cushions, whether on purpose or after spilling out of a purse or pants pocket. A California woman found $36,000 in the cushions of a sofa she scored free on Craigslist. Cash-strapped college students have been known to scour their sofas for loose change at the end of the month, says Neal-Barnett. Plenty of other stuff turns up there, too.

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“Sofas are the repository for many of our stories,” says Mark Rubin, who owns multiple 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchises. Rubin says he has seen a litany of stuff fall out of sofas, including porn, sex toys, alcohol, weed, food and letters. Everyday items, including keys, jewelry, toys, photos, pens and ticket stubs, usually end up there by accident, says Rubin. “People snooze on the sofa and these small things get lost,” he says.

Downsizers and cleaning services report that alongside the stray Goldfish crackers and pennies, they have found dangling diamond earrings, gift cards, uncashed checks and even steak knives when sofa cushions are removed. Remote control missing? It’s probably wedged in a crevice in your couch. In some parts of the country, junk haulers find handguns under there. Rubin says a job in D.C. once turned up a cache of intricate blueprints stashed under a cushion. “It didn’t say top secret,” says Rubin. “But how would I know?”

Libby Kinkead, co-owner of Potomac Concierge, a move management and downsizing firm, says, “You just never know where people are going to tuck things away for safekeeping.” (Her firm once found a dead cat in the freezer. Someone had stashed it there for later disposal.)

But back to sofas.

“If you’ve lost anything, the couch should be one of the first places you look,” says Melissa Homer, chief cleaning expert at Microfiber Wholesale. It was part of Homer’s previous job, as the chief cleaning officer at MaidPro, to instruct cleaning teams about the proper way to vacuum a sofa. She says her staff watched videos that showed techniques and instructed them to leave any treasures found inside on the coffee table with a note. Legos were a chief nemesis, often getting stuck in vacuum crevice tools.

“I remember our cleaners having a fun running gag for a while, posting on our private Facebook group all the little Lego men they’d saved from being stuck in their hoses after vacuuming couches,” she says. “They would post photos of them with either sad or happy faces after their rescue.”

And allowing Dorito crumbs or other food to pile up in your sofa can also lead to unwanted visitors. Homer says one cleaner found a cache of acorns and rat poison under some cushions. “The customer was battling pests in the house and instead of eating the poison, the mice were stashing it for a winter snack in different warm, cozy spots in their house, like the sofa,” Homer says.

Franklin’s will reminded Homer of her own family. “My mom until last year had been keeping her will and other important documents in a cookie tin,” Homer says. “In Aretha Franklin’s generation, moms and dads kept important stuff tucked in envelopes in drawers or cookie jars.”

The habit speaks to people’s larger insecurities, Neal-Barnett adds.

“Looking beyond Aretha, I think there are people still around who look back to the [Great] Depression and do not trust things, like banks,” she says. “We have people who still hide their money in their mattress or other places. People’s approach to money is often transmitted down from generation to generation. If you grew up with someone with this approach to money, you may be likely to emulate what they did.”