What is it about Ikea?

and more importantly, why is it I have not thought of a similar business to make myself a fortune?

Seriously... it's BASIC furniture and BASIC accessories. There is stuff in that store that we would walk right past if someone was selling it at a market stall for £1, mumbling under our breath ' cheap tat'... yet put it inside that giant blue and yellow building, and we all go 'OOOOOH. What a bargain.. let's get two!....

Don't get me wrong.. I have long participated in 'The Ikea family day out'... You may be familiar with it? You decide you need an extremely vital product only Ikea sells, e.g candles (!)... and convince yourself their cheap price makes it worth the hour drive (and petrol) to go there... To be fair though, this weekend they were doing 21% off everything instore on Saturday, thus those £2 candles were now about £1.60...

So there we were Saturday evening.. 6pm, we set out to visit Ikea, armed with a map from Oxford to Milton Keynes, kindly provided by Ikea.. (which we were able to print on our own paper, thus making us believe we had saved money in some way no doubt). Being somewhat suspicious of the route, the first thing we did was ring Trev, after all he was known as Mr Milton Keynes, having worked there for many years... he answers the phone, we ask ' is this the How To Direct Us from Headington to Ikea Helpline'? .. his response 'Certainly is, do you want me to talk you in, we are in the store right now' ! 

What a great feeling of relief (no not that we could get directions - more about not being the only saddos in Ikea on a Saturday night)... Subsequently we use the handy printed map from Ikea to turn over and scrawl down a couple of directions from Trev, and take a completely different route via Bicester...

An hour later, we are weaving our way through the store marvelling at the displays, opening drawers, oohing and aahing at the tidiness of these not actually used by real human beings displays...imaging how that perfect kitchen would look in our home... (the truth, which you do not want to accept instore is that kitchen would look perfect, we would just have to remove a bedroom and possibly the living room in order to fit it)..

We spend I guess it was a couple of hours wandering the store.. I feel a bit of a failure because all I pick up is a little bag of stones (you know the type - polished, sit candles in them).. and a pair of dish scrubbing brushes for 29p, which are for work anyway, as i'm sick of finding a smelly wet cloth sitting in water)... 

I notice that down in the area where you collect your flatpack furniture there is a strong smell of chipboard and extremely raw pine. Somehow I do not feel upset at not making any major purchases...

As we line up to pay for our purchases with several hundred other people (by now it's about 930pm) we are surrounded by bags and boxes dropped by people who obviously made the error of coming during normal hours and gave up on the queues. (Or perhaps died of exhaustion, and their bodies were dragged away to the flatpack coffin section out the back)...

My favourite memory of the night was the guy in the line behind us who had a flat trolley, piled high with boxes, on top of them was a red Ikea cushion.. and lying upon the cushion was the head of his 8yr old daughter, who was dead to the world, stretched the whole length of the boxes.    They even managed to scan the boxes without waking her.

How we both wanted to be her..

x Sue

Comments

[seb]

this is a great article! finally somebody has acknowledged the true rubbish that is inside a big blue and yellow, car boot sale! well done sue! i always listen to the morning glory every morning on my way to school!