Ikea

Ikea. We've all been there and if you're like me, every time you venture there you vow that that will be the last time...until that damned catalogue entices you back again for some more punishment. If only life could be like an Ikea catalogue..I mean, what utter perfection would it be to have your garage looking like the "Gorm" page. Even their bookcases are perfect - with every book the same height and with the same coloured spine. All matching. All co-ordinated. All perfect.

I once got so intoxicated with the PAX wardrobes on show in the Ikea catalogue, with the belts in their special belt compartment and everything looking so tidy and perfect that I convinced my husband that renovating our wardrobe would be on par to achieving world peace. So, we measured everything, planned our purchase, wrote down all the required item numbers and made our way to the store.

How the Swedish guy who owns Ikea ever made any money is a mystery to me...From the get-go, the Ikea experience is one fraught with frustration. You can't get to one particular department without first being forced to see every other display on offer...it's like decorating via hostage-tactical warfare. Don't want to look through 5 different kitchen designs? Too bad...you have to follow their maze of displays to get to the end. This is why I give my daughter a biscuit to eat when we go there, so if it all gets too much I can follow the crumb trail back to the entrance.

Once you've navigated the rabbit warren of showrooms you get to the self serve warehouse. I love the way the sign says "we don't want you to hurt yourself. If something is heavy, please ask one of our staff who will be only too happy to help". Staff? What staff? Have you EVER seen a staff member at Ikea? I have seen the occasional blue shirted person strolling around, but they're always on a mission with that "do not disturb me, I'm on very important business" look on their face.

You can spend thousands of dollars on all the co-ordinated parts to build a big wall unit at Ikea, but if they're out of stock of the one little shelf that binds the whole thing together, you're out of luck. They don't have a back-order system for most of their stock and they can't tell you when or even IF an item is coming back into stock, so you can either put everything back on the shelf and go home or buy all the available items and hope and pray that that one shelf will be there next week. Their online stocktake system is supposed to avoid this problem, but judging by the customer going psycho on the weekend, I'm guessing this still can be an issue.

Despite these frustrations, I still end up spending far too much at Ikea. Do you ever go there with the aim of buying one item and up spending over $500? This happens to me every time. Wow, check out that vase...so cheap! Forget the fact I already have 18 unused other vases at home - must get this other one to add to the collection. There are some things, however, that even I won't buy, no matter how cheap they are... What's with Ikea's kids cuddly toys? No standard bears and dolls here - they have the walrus and moose. Swedish kids ideas of cute and cuddly must be different to mine. Most of their toys have that "what the fuck is that thing?" vibe. Last weekend I was looking at this thing in the kids department that sits there and lights up. I asked Stu, "what does that do?", to which he replied "it sits and lights up"..."oh..." Righteo then...I mean, who's buying this stuff? I think this stuff appeals to the Montessori type mother who has an inbuilt aversion to anything with a Fisher Price label on it. If you ask me, half the 'toys' look like they were designed by some crack smoking Swedish guy who submitted his design as a joke.

Another thing for the WTF file was the pot pourri they were selling. I mean, isn't Ikea supposed to be the purveyor of all things sleek and modern? I haven't seen artificially coloured pot pourri since 1985, and yet there's packets of it for sale at our local Ikea.

But all this weirdo stuff aside, I still manage to spend loads of cash there. It's the shelving/storage things that keep me coming back. Nobody does storage like Ikea. It's ironic, because from everything I've seen of the Swedish/Danish/Nordic lifestyle, people there have very few "things" and houses operate on a "less is more" basis, but not us. We have so much stuff and there's never enough storage to store it all. I harbour a secret crush on the guy (or girl), who designed the Expedit storage cubey thing. We have several of these in our house and they are awesome. Those little Branas baskets can hide untold piles of crap. There's even a special section on photobucket for people to show off their Expedit unit and how they choose to decorate it. One person has painted each individual box a different colour and set these up as individual little dolls house type worlds with little figures living in them...Forget the United Nations...it could be possible that this one shelving unit could be the answer to uniting the world - we can all share our Expedit decorating tips and unite together for world peace.

Getting the Expedit box into your car is a whole other adventure. Have you ever stood at the car loading bay at Ikea and listened to the conversations taking
place around you? Last weekend, as I minded the trolleys and Stu went to get the car, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on this couple nearby who were arguing about getting their stuff into their car. Here's this burley guy, trying to cram several large boxes into his small Holden Barina. His partner was grumbling at him "that's never going to fit...it's too long...it's too wide...watch out you'll break it...I told you it wouldn't fit". With each naggy comment you could see his brain thinking "I'm going to shove this Billy bookcase right up your..."

Whatever you go there for...the swedish meatballs, the 'alternative' toys, the chance to lay around in a showroom bed all day without anyone telling you to move along...Ikea is a rite of passage for us all. Now if you excuse me, I have a date with an allen key...