Name that store
Mo and I just completed an IKEA put-the-damn-thing-together project and we are still together. For this I am grateful. Mo reminded me mid-gripe I had many things for which I ought be grateful and that made me doubly grateful because it was she who was there to remind me. My wife kicks ass. If it had been Mo, e, and one of the cats reminding me, my gratitude would have been increasing at a geometric rate rather than plodding along arithmetically.
On the subject of gratitude, I will be grateful to the nuthatch if he or she is born soon and before I have to assemble any further IKEA products. I feel like such a loser, I am buying a brand that says I can't afford real furniture. C'est la vie. Notwithstanding these feelings of self-loathing I return for more. More IKEA. More of those little Allen Keys.
I would like to propose to the big blue box store in question a new, truth-telling, slogan. My now deceased friend John H. said "IKEA is Swedish for I am arguing with my wife." (Meaning, he said this before he died, not, like, right before he died, as far as I know, but while he was living and not dead. It seems unlikely that the dead would return to this realm to dismiss IKEA to the living, but who knows? IKEA is everywhere.) I had suggested IKEA, "Swedish for you pay to put it together." Now I am thinking it is Swedish for "Sketchily designed furniture, made in the third world, and assembled by amateurs." Of course, I don't know any Swedish words or whether they favour umlauts, if it is they who indeed possess that elevated colon (besides Motorhead that is), or what IKEA might actually mean, if anything, other than "Give us your money. At least you aren't shopping at Wal-Mart, or Target, or whatever. Have a meatball. Have 100 for $9.99."
There probably is, or ought be started, an IKEA self-help program. IA. To those of you with IKEA assembly stories, or any IKEA story which is not boring, I ask you to share your stories. Together we can recover.
P-man out.
posted by p-man at 11:57 p.m.
5 Comments:
When Brian and I were in law school, we had an apartment furnished solely by IKEA. Then we graduated and got jobs, and I thought, "Now we have arrived and can buy real furniture."
Turns out, not so much. Miles and I were just there on Sunday to pick out a kiddie table and chairs. I comfort myself with the idea that buying IKEA furniture for kids is NOT THE SAME as buying it for myself. But looking around the house, it is probably still more than 50% IKEA.
I have to agree with your late friend as to the meaning of IKEA. If only I could get back the hours I have spent in that store gripping tiny pencils and glaring at Brian and where the fuck is the exit I am going to die here.
At least the one in Schaumburg, IL serves a mean grilled cheese.
I think IKEA furniture is useful when used sparingly. (Too much is depressing, it is true.) Once you have it, it is very hard to get rid of it in favor of something better. We had a bad case of "we have a bookcase, why do we need a new one?", which led us to abandon several pasteboard bookcases in Rhode Island when we moved to the western United States.
I always figured IKEA had to be some obscure Norse god of college furnishings and early days of marriage.
But even when we try to escape IKEA, we end up back there. Witness our couch. we looked everywhere for one we both liked, and ifnally found a great custom sofabed at - oh yes - IKEA. We dutifully measured the doorway, waited our 8 weeks. Called them to find out if it would be delivered before our first overnight guests arrived. They had lost it. "IT'S EIGHT FEEET LONG AND BRIGHT RED!" I shouted. "HOW COULD YOU LOSE THAT?!"
So they rushed a new one, delivered it, and while it fit through the door, it did not make it around the turn that immediately followed. Urk. It was custom. Meaning, in swedish, no returns. Misterpie and I whipped out the reciprocating saw, peeled back the lovely red velvet we'd spent so much time selecting, and cut our couch in half.
We couldn't leave it in the hall, nor did we want evidencethat the curious red streaking on the walls seven feet above the floor might have anything to do with us.
Yes, we cut that beauty in half, and then walked around our neighbourhood in a daze, trying to figure out how we'd get it back together again. Thank god for our local hardware store, a beacon that guided us back to a happy place about our couch.
I personally love IKEA because of their family rooms. I was afraid that I'd have to nurse on some microbial open-faced toilet, but luckily there was an ENTIRE room dedicated to family care. There was an actual changing table, toy station in case you had older kids with you, and a super-comfy chair for nursing.
And of course there's the furniture which upon [correct] assembly boosts my ego.
My husband says that Ikea is Swedish for fuck-me-over. As in, fuck me bent over backwards because assembling Ikea anything is like a scene from Deliverance (squeal!) but you go back for more because where else are you going to find unhideous (wd?) furniture that doesn't require taking out a second mortgage?
Yeah, we have issues.
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