I must have low furniture esteem - I keep going back to this bad relationship. I look forward to a time in my life when I'll sever these Swedish ties, when I'll finally feel deserving of material more substantial than particle board, when I'll stand up and assert, "MY furniture will come PRE-ASSEMBLED!"
But then I find myself in a warehouse drooling over things I can't pronounce, and I ration that it IS more affordable, and with the money I save, why I could afford a trip to Sweden! I oscillate between frugality and entitlement, quality versus quantity.
But today - assembling my new INGOL.F bench for the downstairs studio (rest there while waiting for your massage!) I may have hit a wall (with my fist. Do they sell drywall at IKEA?). It came with a chunk of (real!) wood already broken off. The one thing wouldn't fit properly into the other thing. It wobbles a bit. It rubbed against a wall, and since this real (!) wood has the consistency of sponge, it dented AND picked up paint. I hate my pretty new bench, and I spent the afternoon swearing in Swedish.
Perhaps the real reason I hate IKEA is that it seems to represent so much of what I hate about consumerism. Disposable, excess, mediocrity. And it really isn't that cheap! We have such low expectations, and that seems to be OK. It was broken right out of the box, but I couldn't be bothered to schlep it all the way back to North York to exchange it. The seams don't fit tight, but meh, it's fine. Remember growing up - how you probably lived with the same furniture for most of your life? Maybe some of it was handed down from your grandparents, and maybe it either became a family heirloom or ended up in your university apartment when your parents finally renovated after 20 years? What will you hand down to your children? Your Billy bookcase? This is becoming the way we operate. Disposable furniture, disposable clothing, disposable lives.
I have made some progress though. I splurged on a beautiful, real (!) wood, seats-12 and-will-last-me-forever French dining room table. It looks wonderful next to my particle board kitchen cabinets.
Draw ut hell-vetta, IKEA.
Oh. Since this blog is supposed to relate to things chiropractic... my back was totally sore from assembling my INGOLF.
This is hilarious and totally familiar. I can empathise with you. Here is my rant...and don't even ask my husband about the bad back he got from trying to fix it!
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