I'll be 50 in January and my son is 18. Behaviorally he has come a very long way. He rarely refuses to help with tasks at home and I can pretty much handle him with relative ease on most days. We have a routine. If he messes things up, he is expected to clean them up. He puts away articles of clothing when asked, he puts his dirty clothes away (tonight, totally unprompted as we have been doing the same thing for years now). Once his behaviors were under control, I have worked tirelessly to get this boy toilet trained. Accidents happen, but we persevere. I don't know if it's just we expected more of him or simply treated him like his older brother and expected him to help out, but the things that they seem to be just starting in earnest for Abbie, we have been doing now for years-homeschool or not. I mean he attends school now during the day, and still helps out in the evenings. The thing is, when I first started watching them, it seemed Abbie was a bit ahead of him. Now, it seems the opposite.
Also, for the couch, there were years where we had a waterproof mattress cover on ours. He also mainly sat on our ottoman (also with a waterproof cover) because we had so many leaky pull ups in those days. Our house really wasn't much to look at back then, but it was what it was. We also in no bleeping way have ever bought light colored furniture that would show massive stains. All of our mattresses have covers on them even though it's rare for him to pee the bed nowadays-it's there as an added protective measure. I get that they want to have nice furniture, lord knows we do too, but we also consider what would work best for our needs-not exactly what may look the best.