Legends speak of a lost land, a place where sleeper sofas magically fit into a 250 ft. apartment with room to spare, where an apartment can be nothing more than a stylish and clean kitchen, and where everything is named in a language that your classic American tongue is going to butcher like… well, like Sam the Butcher.
I speak of the showroom Shangri-La, the housewares heaven, the utilitarian Utopia; the one and only (with 53 locations in the United States alone) IKEA.
May’s mother wanted to check out some chairs at IKEA to replace her kitchen chairs, and we decided to turn this into a proper family outing because walking around the showroom and pretending that your living space will ever look so organized and clean is how you entertain yourself on a budget.
In case you have never been to an IKEA, they are basically a furniture and housewares store, but one where form follows function. Their goods are usually fairly well crafted, stylish in a minimal sense, and are pretty affordable. Where they really made their name, though, was in their stores, where they devoted a large amount of space to a showroom that displayed an array of mock apartments and house rooms entirely decorated with IKEA stock.
The dining rooms would be sporting IKEA tables with IKEA chairs and decorated with IKEA dinnerware and perfectly folded IKEA cloth napkins. The kitchens were flush with IKEA countertops below IKEA cabinets that were filled with IKEA glassware, next to the IKEA refrigerator, itself chock full of IKEA storage containers. The bedrooms are IKEA beds covered with IKEA comforters with IKEA picture frames, IKEA clocks, and IKEA lights on the walls.
The whole thing morphs from cool to slightly disturbing to eldritch horror to transcendental room decor understanding.
And let’s be clear – when I was outfitting my Brooklyn apartment, a lot of the stuff came from IKEA. It never looked as awesome as one of the showroom examples, but nevertheless I did get some compliments on it. Furthermore, as a testament to its durability, a number of those items are still in our current house.
That said, as I told May, “Our place is never going to look like one of these examples.”
The group of us moved around the showroom, and I gladly played around in the different sets, opening drawers and refrigerators just to check to see if they had, if fact, put more of their own items inside, like an adult-version of a Fisher-Price playset.
May and I were also looking at possibly replacing our own kitchen chairs. Again, these have been with us since my Brooklyn days, and alas, it’s showing, as the frames are reaching a point of load bearing that is slightly greater than a couch cushion fort. We checked several types out, May’s mother confirmed her preference for new chairs, and we exited the showroom relatively unscathed.
The marketplace, however, was a greater challenge.
In IKEA, the marketplace is where they have all of the smaller items available to place in your bag / cart. All of those wooden spoons, placemats, pencil holders, closet lights, bath towels, and, of course, scented candles in a glass; this is the place where it is easy to swap out your mask of the refined shopper with that of the juiced-up impulse buyer.
In our case, however, we had two aces up our sleeve.
The first was Gracie. When we entered I pulled her into a father-daughter huddle:
“Okay, Gracie, I have an important job for you.”
“What’s that, daddy?”
“Stay by Momma’s side, and whatever you do, don’t let her wander off from the main path.”
“How come?”
“I fear we may never get her back if she is lured among the dish racks and napkin holders.”
“Gotcha, daddy.”
As a result, whenever May started to hear the siren song of slotted spoons, Gracie was quick to pounce, pushing her back into the safety of the main aisle, all while saying, “No, momma! Stay on the safe part!”
Another advantage was that as it turns out, we already had a lot of the stuff that caught our eye:
“Oh, these are some nice wastebaskets,” May pointed out.
“Yeah,” I replied, “we have those at home.”
“Oh look at those bath mats!” May exclaimed. “They look so familiar.”
“Ah, that’s because we have them in the downstairs bathroom.”
“Really?” May asked.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “In fact, you know that blue rug in my office? I got that from here too. And that desk. And that wooden figure. And those picture frames. And–okay, you know what? Our place looks a lot more like an IKEA showroom piece than I thought.”
In the end, however, we managed to escape without buying anything. We did take some photos and make some notes on possible replacement items, though, thus I would not be surprised if a return trip isn’t in the near future for us.
After all, the seductive power of buying things named TRÄDGRÄNSEN and SJÄLSLIGT are hard to resist.
This vignette is very reminiscent of going there with my wife! On emerging from the maze, though, my better half sends me back in on a fetch quest for some item deep within the labyrinth. I can either start from the beginning or pick my way backwards through an unending flow of shoppers, like a salmon swimming upstream...
Tell me you had the Swedish meatballs.