IKEA is the Devil’s Playground

We went to IKEA this week. It was the first time we had ever made the trip to the myth­i­cal store. After all these years we had resisted it’s allure, it’s temp­ta­tion, it’s flat boxes, and it’s meatballs.

That is until Hubby decided we absolutely needed peace & quiet at the kitchen table. Or if that couldn’t be accom­plished, leg room.

We out­grew our small eat-in kitchen about 2 kids back, but given the hous­ing mar­ket sucks mon­key balls (that is the tech­ni­cal term for the cur­rent cri­sis) we have been stuck in our starter home like so many fam­i­lies before us. In an attempt to get Mamacita at the table with the rest of us we moved a long fold­ing table into the kitchen. It was sup­posed to be tem­po­rary, 2 years later we were still doing this tem­po­rary fix. We had been sav­ing for a new table but we hadn’t been sure what we wanted.

With kids hav­ing easy reach to kick each other under the table, din­ners were becom­ing more of a shout­ing match between the kids over whose feet are touch­ing whose (because the fold­ing table is nar­row) than eat­ing. Hence, Hubby’s mas­ter plan of tak­ing every­one to Ikea to FINALLY get a table & leg room.

Oh, Glo­ri­ous Leg Room. How we love you!!

Leg room for Hubby equals a mini-paradise. He is will­ing to endure tor­ture for leg room. When we didn’t have it on our flight he was under the impres­sion that he could count lack of leg room in coach as penance.

That means despite all logic to the con­trary we packed all 4 kids up with us two adults & decided to plow through IKEA at a pace that I am sure made the back to school col­lege stu­dents think they will never have sex while at away at col­lege for fear of end­ing up like us. I con­sider that a job well done.

While there my chil­dren tested every­thing out. I can safely attest to the safety fea­tures of kitchen draw­ers, sofas, chairs, and a mul­ti­tude of other prod­ucts. The elder chil­dren left no pil­low unturned, but they did also put any­thing they got out back & noth­ing was bro­ken. They said “please & thank you” even as they tried to beat each other to the next kitchen station.

IKEA is really a pretty kid friendly place. They do have a play­room if you want to use for the kids while you shop or the kids are more than wel­come to go through & test out the store. Signs through­out the store encour­age kids to try things out, a nice touch.

How­ever, the fam­ily bath­room at the one we went to was dirty. It was the only real downer to the fam­ily friendly motto. It should have been prop­erly cleaned, with no toys in the actual stall (that was gross), and larger if want­ing to accom­mo­date nurs­ing moth­ers who want to nurse pri­vately like in a sep­a­rate sec­tion not almost in the stall. I am think­ing I should send a let­ter because the other bath­rooms were not dirty & it was dirty as in hadn’t been kept up well not just in between bath­room checks. I love the con­cept of a fam­ily friendly bath­room, just think some­thing was over­looked at this loca­tion (I hope).

We did get the kids some food while there because they were appar­ently STARVING TO DEATH. It had been a whole 2 hours since they had eaten any­thing. You would think we were using enhance inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques on them for how the act when they get hun­gry. AND it HITS out of NOWHERE. Like a tor­nado touch­ing down in the mid­dle of night, you are com­pletely caught up in the chaos hop­ing that Aun­tie Em will save you.

We also man­aged to spend more money and buy more than we planned on, Hubby even cre­ated a list for more items that he would like to get. I have no idea how to pay for every­thing, that wasn’t on the orig­i­nal list. But I am chalk­ing it up to being a good Amer­i­can, I mean if we don’t spend money we don’t really have how will the econ­omy ever get better?

Here are the flat boxes of what we got:

Includes: kitchen table it has draw­ers in the cen­ter for us a plus, chairs, I really love the kid’s chair we got for Mamacita (not a high chair but a junior chair), small cof­fee table (best deal at $20), POANG chair & stool (Hubby’s recliner was dead & given how much he works he deserves a place to sit), wooden baby gym & baby play­mat (the baby toys were bought with gift money for D-man with explicit direc­tions to get some­thing fun for him with it).

I was impressed with Hubby though. He put every­thing together with light­en­ing speed, show­ing off his manly prowess at fur­ni­ture assem­bly. The kids “helped” and there was no cussing or throw­ing of objects, by Hubby or the children.

Only down­side is I’m pretty sure once you’ve crum­bled to the temp­ta­tion of IKEA you aren’t able to eas­ily pull away from it (as Hubby’s grow­ing list of things may indicate).

It’s like a cult. A cult of flat boxes & meat­balls chas­ing you with stor­age ideas that make small spaces & not so small spaces more func­tional. The evil, the hor­ror, & the shoe stor­age cab­i­net I want so badly.

Tagged as: family, Helping the economy, IKEA, shopping