I had to make a trip to Ikea on Friday. Who am I kidding? If you "need" to go to Ikea you take your husband so he can lift the heavy stuff, but if you "want" to go to Ikea, you go on your own or with a BFF. It was one of those kind of trips. Admittedly I did "need" some of those plastic clips to put on opened bags of breadcrumbs or cereals, but really a peg works just fine. Still....
Let me describe my findings on the life cycle of an Ikea trip, using myself as an example. See if you can relate...
You arrive, get yourself an easy access/close to exit car-park. You hydrate up in the car, write a list of 4 things you're after, pull your shoulders back, inhale..then you're off.
You start by lazily wandering around the show rooms, marvelling at the styling flare, mentally copy ideas, and starting to scribble down items on the pencil and paper you collected at the door. That you hadn't planned but need now so you can copy the styling.
You find the one large item of furniture you came for. At this point, you could just write down the aisle and bay numbers then head there, pick up your furniture and check out? Thats what you do on the day you have your husband. Not on a solo Ikea day...oh no no no...
You keep wandering, scribbling more ideas and items, collecting a few awkward shape bits in the two yellow shopping bags you've picked up along the way. You scan for a trolley and decide not to back track to get one like the pro's have.
The tempo changes a little. You glance at your watch and see you've lost an hour and a half. You head down into the Market Hall. Time to actually find all the shit you've written down. You start to get a little frenzied, grabbing a trolly, loading stuff on it, listening to the internal chatter that tells you do do need 6 packets of those $4.00 serviettes, 80 plastic clips and 2 50m rolls of christmas wrap "because when will you be back again?". Your brain is in overdrive, you occasionally glance at your list, congratulating yourself as you do, or crossing items off if you've already gone past where they are so you don't have to go back. Which is never done in Ikea. Only forwards, never back. You spend 20 minutes looking at lamps, you see that although they said they were only $39.99, you still need to buy the base at $49.99 so you walk away, knowing you won't get that 20 minutes back in your life. By now you can almost smell the end. The frenzy and panic is palpable. You have bulging yellow Ikea bags filled with unplanned items, you're at the candle section, which is always the signal for the end, you throw 100 tea lights in. Because that's just how your rolling now.
And then you enter it.
The Self Serve Furniture Centre.
You need calm.
You need one of those big trolleys (and to transfer your stuff from your medium trolley).
And you need to be alone. Because without your husband lifting your furniture flatpack onto your trolley for you, you're going to need to hump it yourself. And that is something you'd rather no one sees.
You get your furniture on, losing a little skin from your shins and bumping the edges of the box ominously (thinking if I've scrapped the paint off my Expedit shelving I'll just live with it, no way am i coming back).
Then with care, much difficulty and a lot of thing control you manoeuvre your trolley to the check out, after carefully and awkwardly navigating it through the "last chance" section.
You check through. This part is always painful not only because of the self packing frenzy, but for the large number of items rung through and the tally at the end that you're sure must include more big piece s of furniture and can't possibly be made up of tea lights, plastic clips and serviettes. Which it is.
You glance at the food section half heartedly but by now you just want to get the hell out of here. But first you've got to get all your crap and your large item of furniture into the car. You lose more shin skin and another edge of your Expedit shelving. But it's in. You slug back some water, and drive with focus out of that car-park, feeling a little ashamed about what's just gone on here...
And if you're like me, you then get lost in the city in a massive downpour..but that's another story.
Do you get this or am I just doing Ikea all wrong?
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