Flat packed dreams and Swedish meatballs

If you just need to organize

Clutter and mess

There’s only one place

And it’s really the best

 

 It sells lovely boxes

And pictures for walls

Flat packed bookcases

And spicy meatballs

 

It’s big and it’s brilliant

With arrows on the floor

And showrooms, a warehouse

A big spinny door…

 

…You know the answer,

Let’s hear you all cheer,

Hip Hip and Hooray!

We’re off to IKEA!

 So here’s the deal. I’ve moved house into our marital home (as of 25^th May anyway). But all my clothes are in a bin bag in my room because I don’t have a wardrobe. And so we went to IKEA. The Boy borrowed his Mum’s big car to fit all the lovely furniture in and we set off at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. Once we got there The Boy had to have a little play on the trolley, obviously. He scooted around smiling like a dog with his head out of the window. Then it was time to get down to business. Off we went, following the arrows, as is the IKEA rule, looking at all the beautiful pretend rooms. The Boy thought it was hilarious to wheel the trolley through the pretend kitchens and bedrooms saying, “Hi, yes, sorry, just looking….you have a nice kitchen” etc.

 
The real drama started when, 30 minutes before closing time, we were only just out of the show room and into the ‘market’. It started to be a bit like supermarket sweep at this point, frantically grabbing things off the shelves. We got to the warehouse (10 minutes to closing) and began running up and down the aisles with our fully loaded trolley, looking for the right wardrobe. Now, I love IKEA, but the cheap prices and sleek designs come at a price. Nothing is called its real name. If the labels read “Delicious oak coffee table”, or “tall strong wardrobe”, or “that white wall clock everyone owns”, we would all know where we stand. When Crazy Meg and I moved into our old flat we rung up an IKEA receipt about a foot long. We highlighted everything that was mine so when we moved out we would know who had bought what. Except by then we had forgotten what SKUBB was. And LACK. And even GRUNDTAL… SO we had to google every single name, find its picture and identify it like they were accused criminals in a furniture line-up parade.
 

Anyway, all the wardrobe frames, doors and shelves are called PAX apparently at IKEA, so we had a right nightmare trying to find the one we had spied in the showroom. Halfway through dragging a door onto our trolley I remembered I’d forgotten the ONE thing I actually wanted from this once-wonderous now-hellish place; magnetic spice tins. SO I legged it into the lift, 5 minutes til lights out, back up to the showroom to get them. When I came back, The Boy informed me that we had the doors, frames, shelves and hinges for the wardrobe but the handles were….

    ...in

           the

              showroom…

For goodness sake.

 He ran once more up to the dreaded showroom while I tried to drag a flattened chest of drawers onto the trolley. The lights flashed and a voice on the tannoy asked us to leave because it was almost tomorrow and no-one should be shopping at IKEA past 10pm. It was like the end of a night out when a club flashes its lights and sweeps the stragglers into a pile in the corner.

Eventually, The Boy came back and we wheeled everything through the checkout. Obviously we had put all the heavy flat packs the wrong way up on the trolley so they couldn’t be scanned. And obviously the cupboard doors were too long for the car. We had to drive home with them between our heads in the front seats like a partition. It did mean we got to play a fun game of ‘Blind Date’, where we took it in turns to be Cilla, the creepy guy after anything he can get, and the ditzy blonde (George’s favourite role).
 
Despite all the drama, I still love IKEA. I’m sitting here at my sturdy yet affordable coffee table, watching the cheap yet beautifully scented candle flicker in the evening atmosphere and I feel happy. There are boxes with labels in cupboards and clothes colour co-ordinated in my wardrobe.

 

Everything has a place in my house.

Now if only I could organize my thoughts in the same way…

 

Love Hannan xx