arianne’s helpful tips: ikea shopping 101
Everyone’s had an IKEA Disaster. You know, the time you arrived at IKEA all bright and excited and four hours later found yourself at home with a contraption that you couldn’t put together or which didn’t fit in its allotted space. Last weekend I took a trip to IKEA, and despite my general handiness, I still managed to purchase the wrong pieces, a few flawed parts and forget to buy bracing for the shelves. To make sure the same doesn’t happen to you, here are a few tips to ensure IKEA shopping success:
1. Snap before you go. Take quick digital shots of your rooms, so that when you’re standing in the store, you can pull out your camera and remember that the adorable polka-dot coffee table in no way matches your classically designed living room.
2. Measure before you go. Not just the area you think you’re gonna fill, but also your floor and wall dimensions, since you’ll inevitably impulse buy rugs, hampers and stools. This is the genius of IKEA.
3. Figure out the mechanics before you buy. When you’re standing among the aisles and bins of parts, *make sure that you understand how to put your item together.* No one ever does this. But if you don’t understand it while you’re there, you’re not gonna understand it at home.
Click through to the next page to read the rest of Arianne’s Tips!
4. Triple-check every piece for manufacturing flaws. IKEA manufacturer defaults are rather common–we’ve experienced quite a few. You know, items missing a peg hole, or indentations. Compare every item to a duplicate.
5. Don’t trust IKEA salespeople. Just because he’s wearing an IKEA nametag doesn’t mean that he understands the intricacies of IVAR shelving. Pick out your parts solo.
6. Call Customer Service. When the inevitable IKEA meltdown takes place at home, call the store’s IKEA customer service line to order the correct parts. If the error is theirs, they’ll mail you the proper parts free of charge.
At the end of the day, IKEA is affordable and great, but they make you pay for it — with day-long IKEA building adventures at home. — Arianne C.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I have another one: Don’t go on a weekend of after five! Take a day off and go. Man, do I get headaches there. (Though I love it….loooove it.)
Also, if you see it and like it and it’s seasonal (like outdoor furniture for instance), buy it. It will not be there the next time. We were there two weeks ago (Not quite April yet) and half the outdoor cushions we wanted were gone forever.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
don’t go with your significant other…unless your looking for a dramatic breakup in a mock kitchen.
also, you really don’t need the cinamon roll on the way out.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Something I’ve done to make the Ikea experience less painful:
After you’re done finding things, waiting in line, and paying for things, take your cart over to the area with couches near the exit, and send someone to get some frozen yogurts. Sit down and eat that frozen yogurt before you start to pack things into your car and head out into traffic.
Spending ten minutes sitting peacefully makes all the difference.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 pm
There was an article somewhere that I think was linked from positivefanatics.com about the “Ikea breakup.” I read it about a year ago.
It seems like it might be more of a problem in areas where most people don’t have cars (NYC, Boston, etc), where all the stuff that they purchase has to be hauled back on the bus and subway. We don’t have Ikea here (or good public transportation, for that matter); we merely order the catalogues, dream, and plan road trips to - PTAH! - Pittsburgh. They’re building one in OH, but still a few hours away. We’ll test the Ikea breakup theory after it opens, I guess.
Or maybe I’m just sanguine because, on our second date, my fiance “helped” me put together a flat-pack file cart from Target. Because he didn’t read the directions well, the top drawer doesn’t open properly, and never will. (The fact that I wasn’t particularly mad that he destroyed my file cart was how I knew I liked him.) I go into the purchase of a flat-pack item knowing that I’m going to have to assemble it myself, and that he will mostly be good for holding things steady when I need another set of hands.