(no subject)

This afternoon curiousangel and I took our very first trip to Ikea.

We were shopping for a china cabinet (we picked this, only with solid white doors on the bottom half), and a wardrobe (we picked this, only goodness it was a lot cheaper, so who knows what special options the version in the picture has - ours will have a closet bar at the top and open shelves on the bottom). We also got a bunch of things we weren't shopping for, as I understand frequently happens at Ikea: a folding stand that holds a laundry bag, a lap tray, a bag of 100 tea lights. (They were $1.99! How could we not get them?)

We didn't bring anything home but the little tchotchkes. They were out of the wardrobe frame, and we didn't think we could get the china cabinet into our car. We'll have to try to bribe or coerce fourgates into taking us out there in his van.

I had heard things about the Ikea shopping experience before, but was still surprised by how different it is from a normal store. When you come in, you pick up a map of the store which has space on the back for a list of the things you're considering. They also supply flimsy plastic measuring tapes and tiny pencils. You follow a predetermined track through the store, winding around a hundred or so little room groupings of furniture and larger areas filled with, for example, fifty different couches all lined up in rows. You make notes on what you like, and at the end there are big shelves lined with boxes of furniture parts. Hopefully you remember what you wanted and where it was.

Everything is customizable to a fault - you can mix and match this wardrobe with these doors, these internal dividers, shelves or drawers of these types, these finishes, these handles. And that's just one of twelve different customizable wardrobe bases, all of which can be combined in different ways. The price tag itemizes the pieces involved in any given floor display - you have to be good at adding and subtracting to figure out what your customized version will cost. We got pretty dizzy towards the end, and had to sit down in a child's room display to go over everything we'd seen and figure out what we were still thinking of buying and what it all cost.

Halfway through there's a cafe selling Swedish meatballs with lingonberries. curiousangel wouldn't buy me the gravlax plate.

It was fun. Dizzying, but fun. All those options... I could easily see Ikea taking over our house.