I Heart IKEA

IKEA, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .

Even with all of the smart storage solutions, clean-lined Swedish design, and tasty meatballs notwithstanding, IKEA would still be one of my favorite stores, for the sheer fun of it! Imagine walking into the largest building you've ever been in (on the same scale as a convention center!) and NOT being dealt an overwhelming blow to your five senses. You head upstairs on the escalator and the entire upper floor shows tons of room-sized displays of all types of items put together in ways you'd actually use them at home: living rooms with couches, pillows, rugs, lamps, art work, decorative items, bookcases, and all the electronics storage you'd ever need---and every item has a handy tag on it with the item's name, price, and where in the store you can find it! You're able to walk into (and touch, and sit, and open cabinet doors . . .) dozens of fabulous and fully laid out kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, home offices, and on, and on. The massive store retains its ability to provide you with an intimate, approachable, charming shopping experience, even among hundreds of other customers shuffling along the singular arrow-painted floor path. Sounds as if it could be awful, right? Far from it.

IKEA (or Pi-kea, as it's referred to in my house, per Futurama) provides a plethora of reasons for why it's a great store; for today, though, I'll mention the BEST reason: flat packs! On the phone the other night, my hubbs mentioned to his mom that we purchased a 60-inch-long console table, a huge wardrobe for the bedroom, a coat rack for the entryway, and a small kitchen cart. Her response was along the lines of "wow! how did you get all of that home?!"---a great question. Enter IKEA's genius solution: flat packs. Most items (including the 4 mentioned above) are sold in a not-yet-assembled state. A flat cardboard box comes with all the parts and hardware (and sometimes tools) needed to re-create the furniture at home (which usually is not too frustrating a process). One more thing: having all the items packaged in flat containers helps not only our sanity in packing the vehicle, but also the environment: more items can be sent in each shipment, so less fuel, less pollution, and less packing-materials waste when it's all said and done.

It's amazing, really, when I think about it, that we were able to bring home all of those pieces of furniture, all in one shot. And financially speaking, too, if we were to go to a standard American furniture store, we'd have been unable to buy more than one at a time, let alone even fit a huge wardrobe in the car. So thank you, IKEA, for putting some great new furniture in my house and leaving some green in my wallet.