How long would you allow someone to sleep on your couch?

[hunter]

28. Nobody lasted long on the sofa in the house I grew up in.

Or in my house, so far as it goes.

Anyone who sticks around has to have a high tolerance for chaos.

It was so bad at my parents' house that two of my siblings found work and left home when they were sixteen.

That was mostly because of my grandma. She'd been removed from the home she owned as a danger to herself and others. She had the financial resources to live in nice "assisted living" places but none would have her, not for long anyways. Then she'd end up living with my parents. She could say the meanest most inappropriate words imaginable to anyone.

Some sofa-sleepers soon learned they could buy my grandma off with cigarettes and whiskey but that would raise the ire of my mom, which could be truly terrifying, even compared to my grandma's rages.

The only time I've ever lived alone in my life was when I was homeless, a feral human living in my broken car in a church parking lot, in the garden shed of a Vietnam war vet who thought he was doing a good deed by keeping me off the streets, etc..

Other than that I've always had roommates or family, making sofa-sleepers who overstayed their welcome a community problem.

Personally, I could never tolerate sleeping on sofas more than two or three days, no matter the circumstances.