IKEA (My Own Personal Hell)

Aweh, guys!

So, since we are in the process of getting our own place and because Hubby melted a spatula cooking last night that we needed to replace, we decided to visit the expat holy land: IKEA.

To be honest, I was excited by the idea! IKEA, the land of Swedish meatballs and DIY furniture. The place where no price is too low and no quality too high. The place where people congregate and take naps in display homes… in theory it sounded awesome!

Stages of grief: hikea, sighkea, crykea, diekea, byekea

However, theory turned into my own personal hell on earth (with fluorescent lighting). When you are an expat you get rid of most tangible belongings to start from scratch again. Basically, burning all for a new and (potentially) better future. We walked in and there was an arrow directing us to their showrooms. “This will be fun” my naïve past-self thought as we made our way through labyrinth which contained no minotaur, only reasonably priced furniture.

The first few displays were awesome. Great to see what you can do in a space, blah, blah… but then it became tedious. We walked through some more and then it became soul sucking. It was so overwhelming trying to glean individuality and inspiration from literally thousands of options. Should we get a rectangular or round dining table, did we like this couch more, did we need an ottoman… if so, which one?

The worst part was the actual setup, and since we were newbies, we didn’t know there were escape routes built into the maze. Even if we knew that, we felt obligated to look at all options and compile a list of things we would need (which was all the things) based on our budget.

The only real moment of joy from the whole experience was leaving and driving past a place called Baby-Dump… so yeah.

Baby-Dump doo doo doo doo doo doo

I know this is not our last foray into the land of IKEA as we still need to furnish our entire future flat, but I rue the day that we will have to return.