IKEA
I drove to IKEA on Sunday. Ok, I didn’t do any of the driving. Jillian rented a 15 passenger van, took out the seats, and drove me, Elias and Shawn to Elizabeth, New Jersey. It took us four hours to get to IKEA, including a 10 minute detour to visit the Newark airport.
IKEA is a strange place. A giant blue box in a landscape of smokestacks, highway and freightcars (and the Newark airport). On a Sunday afternoon it was swarming with people. Mostly families – I can’t tell you how many kids I nearly tripped over or ran down with my cart.
I only took one picture inside the showrooms.
There are small exhibit rooms filled with furniture and accessories – you know, a bedroom or bathroom or office outfitted entirely in IKEA products. Then they toss all of the sofas and easy chairs in a huge open space. Likewise with the bookshelves, and the kitchen tables, and so on.
When you decide on your ideal bathroom vanity, you check the tag and write down the warehouse number of the vanity box. Or, if it’s a blue tag, you find an employee who plugs something into a computer and gives you a printout to take to the checkout area.
All four of us had at least one blue tagged item. After paying, we shuttled our carts over to the waiting area. By this time, it was after 8 o’clock, official IKEA closing time. There were 20 or so people waiting for their blue tag furniture.
We waited for a long time. Jillian was the last person to have her named called. Probably because she had the most stuff.
Here’s my and Elias’s consolidated non-furniture cart:
Between the four of us, we had six carts. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d fit everything in the van, but due to some awesome Homer Simpson-esque Tetris skills, everything made it.
Hey! Look at that red-eyed demon head nestled in the right side of the van. It’s part of the EVIIL line of accessories.
Was it worth spending eight hours in a van? Sure. I came away the winner for least money spent ($202.16). I bought a big orange rug, an under-the-sink cabinet for the bathroom, a bathmat, an outdoor planter, some organizational stuff, and a bunch of kitchen accessories. Elias bought a desk, a TV stand and a million lamps. Right now it looks like we backed up the van and dumped the contents into our livingroom. Soon I hope to have pictures of our sweet Scandinavian enriched apartment.
Smells, I’ll take a picture of the planter. Jeeze. You could just come over, you know.