Ikea

Well, I discovered yesterday that the time to go to Ikea is solo on a Thursday at about 10:30 am, versus with the entire family on a Saturday afternoon. Except of course when it was time to load up the car - I could have used my husband's helping hands (and muscles) with that one.

But the store was wonderful to shop in. One or two other sets of people (singles/couples/families) in a section with me at any given time. And I could take all the short cuts I wanted to avoid entire sections all together since I was there for three specific items.

Have you shopped at Ikea? Especially with the family? No surprise 30 Rock called it "relationship kryptonite". The trip starts off all fun with meandering around looking at all the room displays, but by the time you've hit the end of the trip (2 or 3 hours later) everyone is tired, crabby and just all around sick of each other.

But we love Ikea stuff at this point in our lives. We have kids. Youngish kids. So very rarely do we want to invest in heirloom-grade furniture, knowing that it will most likely get destroyed by grimy hands. Ikea is awesome for items that look great but cost very little. And I must admit I pretty much rock the assembly of Ikea items. Jim doesn't have the patience for it, but the left-brain side of me loves having the step-by-step instructions to follow (though I have to wonder where all the Allen wrenches end up - there must be a large stash of them by now someplace in my house).

And I'm passing that love on to my son. He helped me assemble two wooden dining chairs yesterday (Stefan - brown-black) and came to realize assembling Ikea furniture is quite like following his Lego instructions. And that boy could wield the Allen wrench. I kept asking if he needed me to finish (they get pretty hard to twist right at the end). Nope - he kept at it with the determined look on his face and got it all the way down.

Now I'm off to the basement to finish assembling the chest of drawers (Hemnes 3-drawer - gray-brown). And our new Salong vase (red) looks fantastic on the mantle!