The mystery of Ikea

We needed cool functional furniture, we have little money, we have exhausted all our local charity furniture stores so Ikea seemed like a good idea.

I don’t know what it is about Ikea but it there seems to be some weird sort of magical pull about the place, ever since we got our new empty apartment we have both felt this strange certainty that it was only a matter of time before we gave in and just furnished it with Ikea products. Yesterday the magic took hold and we made the trip to the hallowed place with the Swedish aura of style and cheapness. So much has already been written about the stupid names all the products have and the never ending gauntlet of showrooms you have to walk through just to get the one thing you want that I feel I don’t need to add to it. The overwhelming feeling I think I had when I left was that slightly dirty feeling of knowing that I’d been manipulated like a child by the clever marketing and the finely physiologically tuned product placement. There was at least 1 thing in our basket that by the time I got them home I was wondering “what even IS this” and the feeling that we really shouldn’t have just spend £12 on a bunch of branches when we could have easily grabbed them of the nearest tree. The wonder of Ikea though is that everything seems like a good idea at the time and by the time you’ve arrived at the checkout and your bill is £200 higher than you thought it would be (all those little ‘cheap’ items add up!) it’s too late to back out and run away – your sucked into the Ikea vortex and the only way out is with your credit card.

In reflection though I think we’re happy, we resisted many strange funky twirly plasticy things and didn’t get tricked into the expensive cookware (though we did mysteriously end up with 12 glasses for the two of us!). All the flat pack stuff went together without to many dramas though we did of course not pick up a separately boxed door to the bookcase we wanted and we’re now both too scared of the Ikea magic to go back and buy it in case before we know it we are hypnotized by the magic again and walk out with a completely new bathroom or something.