How can anyone stand to shop at Ikea?

[naomikritzer]

I always feel so hopeful as I go up the giant escalator past Smalland. Initially, it all looks so exciting and colorful and appealing. Even if I'm not really there to shop (I was in there today because I'm going to write a text message about the availability of cheap European-made wood toys there, for parents doing their Christmas shopping) I always find some odds and ends I want.

And then I go down to the first level and start trying to find my way out.

Ikea is incredibly disorienting so I followed the signs, which led me through the kitchen stuff, and then through the rugs, and then through bath, and then through bedroom... I think it was in the bedroom area that I started to feel a sense of panic. It got worse as the signs led me through the self-serve warehouse. Should I abandon all hope? Resign myself to eternity surrounded by flat-packed birch furniture, colorful plastic tableware, cork trivets, $1.99 rag throw rugs? Or should I drop everything I was carrying and break into a run in the hopes that I'd find my way back to the outside world?

But beyond the warehouse, the end came into sight: the cash registers. I joined a long line. It didn't move. All the other lines were long, too, and none of them really looked like they were moving.

The main thing I wanted to buy was the $5 muffin tin. We do need a new muffin tin, but not urgently, and I can buy one for $10 at Target and I won't have to fight hyperventilation while waiting in an endless non-moving line. The lines at Target are generally pretty short, in fact -- I've rarely had to wait more than five minutes. So I ditched everything I was carrying and got the hell out.

I've been in Ikea before but I've never actually bought anything, because I always get fed up with the place before I have paid-for goods in hand. It's funny, because I can shop at the Mall of America just fine. Probably because the Mall at least has the decency to break itself up into lots of manageable little stores, 99% of which I can ignore completely, and it provides maps that are actually useful and drawn more or less to scale so I can find my way to the one I'm there for.

I'm still going to submit my text message about their cheap European-made wood toys. Everyone else seems to love Ikea.

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

The first time I went to Ikea, I marveled at the sheer size of the place. It's so amazingly huge that I'm pretty sure there are people who just live there constantly.

However, like you, I find myself wanting to flee somewhere mid-way through the process. I've managed to make it through the line, but only because I show up right at opening and could compete in the Olympic division for Power Shoppers on Speed. (Last time through Ikea took me 35 minutes from stepping inside the doors to walking out again. With a two year old.) Still, it's too big, and I don't really like shopping there.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I hate Ikea. I hate the layout and the disorientation, and the fact that, while the furniture is cheaper, it's not always cheap, and they don't deliver (well, they do, for an astronomical fee) and you have to build it yourself, and it's terrible poor quality.

I hate it so much.

[naomikritzer]

The price really has to be something special to get me to assemble something myself. I hate assembling furniture.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

And it's not that cheap! Granted, $70 is cheaper than real wood bookcases, but it's not cheap enough for something that won't last you three years or a move, whichever comes first.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I like IKEA. But then, I know all the shortcuts now (maybe yours doesn't have the shortcuts), and I never (if I can possibly avoid it) go anywhere near the place within two months of Christmas, because the lines are, as you say, easily long enough to reach the Arctic Circle.

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

Indeed, learning the short-cuts is key. I also never go there on weekends, and never after Nov. 1.

That said, I tend to be disappointed, too, but mainly because what I was expecting/hoping to find isn't as useful/workable/effective as I had hoped. I always go in expecting find "the thing" I need, and come out feeling like I was misled. IKEA is very good on hype, and they do have some clever and useful things -- but those things never seem to be the things I was looking for in the first place.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I posted around this time last year -- when we were moving flats, and buying flooring and a new dresser and a bed for the kid -- about how going to IKEA on a Saturday in November is the absolute worst idea in the world.

I also find the catalogue can be quite misleading, or maybe it's just because I'm bad at visualizing: things are never the size I think they're going to be, and I now have the world's tiniest desk lamp in my office as a result (but it's very bright!).

[naomikritzer]

Not on weekends or after 11/1 is a good rule of thumb. I was thinking, when I headed out shopping yesterday, that I was going to beat some of the Christmas rush, but of course the new Black Friday is the Friday after Halloween.

[naomikritzer]

Mine might well have the short cuts, but I have a lousy sense of direction, and hunting for / using shortcuts in a place as generally confusing as Ikea would be a recipe for finding myself living off the corpses of my fellow travelers somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains. (That would be a Donner Party joke, FYI. I tried to resist, but failed.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

... but at least you would have a place to sleep ;^)

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I've gotten to like IKEA better since I discovered the shortcuts. I can now get in and out pretty quickly, and there are some good deals there. I also don't mind assembling shelves, etc.

I dislike that I can't buy anything I can't lift by myself unless I pay the huge delivery fee.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I actually kind of like assembling stuff -- it gives me a sense of accomplishment (although I could be better at it, as our ever-so-slightly crooked dressers attest). And I like that when we need more or taller bookshelves we can just go and buy a few more IVAR pieces, and they're cheap, and made of actual wood.

The delivery fees do suck, though. Also, it's annoying when you see something in the catalogue that's just what you want (a $130 kids' bunk bed, for instance) and then discover that your store doesn't have it, the next closest store doesn't have it, and ordering it online will cost an extra $150 or so.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, you can find some good deals in the 'seconds' area near check-out. I found a set of 2 x 4 cube shelves there for half price, with only one superficial bit of damage to it - and preassembled.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

We have only just got our first IKEA within hailing distance (well, it's in Orlando, so it's still a haul). I am planning not to go until sometime next year. ;)

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Never been to Ikea but I've been to Oklahoma, but may have to make the trip out there soon. I've decided that one of the things I'm going to do for Christmas is make candy, and I need candy molds. Someone in the downtown Minneapolis Macys told me that Ikea might have 'em--if not that then maybe they'd have novelty ice cube trays.

Of course I really should try Ingrebritson's (sp???) on Lake Street first.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Ingebretssons have candy moulds, or they did this time last year. They had awesome cookie cutters too.

They're also a little real human shop and not a huge scary multinational giant IKEA.

[(Anonymous)]

"They're also a little real human shop and not a huge scary multinational giant IKEA."

Slap to the forhead. I'd completly not thought about that. Thanks for reminding me. Ingebretssons it is!

[malachitefer.livejournal.com]

Although Ingebretsson's on a weekend during the Christmas shopping season can be a frightening experience as well. As crowded as IKEA, narrower passages lined with probably breakable objects and Scandinavian kitsch jumping out at you from around every corner. The crowd's a lot nicer, though.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

And you can get fabulous pickled herring at Ingerbritson'*. If you like pickled herring.
(*No one knows how to spell it unless they are Norwegian and grew up here.)

I hate Ikea myself.

[naomikritzer]

They do have novelty ice cube trays. They caught my eye early on. I think they were on the right just after I came up the escalator to get in.

[kellymccullough.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I love Ikea and normally I hate shopping. They generally have exactly what I'm looking for, and usually several varieties, and...Uh oh, I'm starting to sound like an Ikea ad.

OTOH, it's almost impossible for me to become lost--something about the way I'm wired, and I located the shortcuts and memorized them on my very first Ikea trip. They're actually pretty consistent from store to store. Likewise, I don't shop there (or anywhere in the Cities if I can possibly avoid it) during the holiday season.

[naomikritzer]

I view having a reliable sense of direction as somewhat akin to a superpower. I once got lost in my hometown by misreading a map and thinking east was to the left and west was to the right. And also simply not knowing that the Coliseum was on the far east (rather than the far west) side of town. This was when I was 17, and I had lived in Madison since I was 4. So, yeah.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I still can't reliably navigate the city I grew up in -- it's a confusing place, and getting worse all the time thanks to unchecked suburban sprawl, but ... embarrassing.

Toronto is easier, in that (a) its major streets tend to run more or less in straight lines and (b) buses are named after the streets they run on, and also mostly run in straightish lines, but I have still managed to get really colossally lost several times. I took a course at Ryerson University about ten years ago, and got lost looking for my classroom almost every week.

Many of my recurring nightmares are about getting hopelessly lost; sometimes, helpfully, I go blind at the same time.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I hate IKEA but then I hate malls and out-of-town hypermarkets almost to the point of phobia. That hyperventilating and leaving without buying the things I've collected sounds really familiar to me.

Last summer my cousin suggested that we all (me, Z, my aunt, my cousin, her mother, her son, her niece and her niece's boyfriend) go to IKEA for a nice family afternoon out. I was absolutely horrified, but also very outvoted. I did in fact buy something -- some wine glasses for my aunt, and I had something resembling a few minutes fun as Z and the niece and boyfriend mocked some of the room mockups.

What this demonstrated was that some people really do like all the things that you and I hate. They're not pretending. They think that a trip to IKEA is a fun way to spend the afternoon when they could go to the beach or the park or stay at home and read their books. And yet they are the heroes of their own stories. People are endlessly weird. I'll never be able to write about some of them, because the effort to get to a place in my heads where what they do makes sense is too much. But I keep working on it, because it helps with the hyperventilation and you never know when it will come in handy.

[redbird]

Oh, dear.

cattitude and I have successfully visited Ikea--by which I mean we knew what we were looking for, and got out of the store with it, not much (or expensive) else, and our sanity. The method involved sticking together as long as possible, and then him fleeing to the parking lot while I dealt with paying and arranging delivery, because the allegedly appealing "food" smells the bakery was pumping into the area near the cashier were making him uncomfortable. I cannot imagine going there recreationally.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

When my husband was in Florida for his uncle-in-law's funeral a few months ago, he was dragged out of the house at 11:00 at night for a fun family excursion to the all-night Wal-Mart. De gustibus non est disputandum, as my father used to say to me a lot, but really.

[naomikritzer]

I can imagine having fun on a group trip to Ikea.

Wal-Mart? No way.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I know. It's like, I don't know, suggesting a family outing to the endodontist.

[naomikritzer]

I can imagine having fun on a group trip to Ikea, with the right group and plenty of time. But it would help if it were pouring rain outside, or 40 below zero, so that I didn't feel like I was wasting a nice day.

[allochthon.livejournal.com]

Going on the weekend is right out. But when I go on weekday evenings I'm usually OK, and you know how I am about crowds. I can navigate it pretty well, with the shortcuts, though.

I am very careful what I buy there, but I have some awesome solid pine bookcases (the same ones Malachitefer has), and some good quality rugs. I enjoy putting the stuff together.

Having said that, I can't for the life of me find a decent filing cabinet there. How weird is that?

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I think if you're going there to buy a muffin tin, you're doomed to hate it. If you're going there to, say, furnish an entire room for cheap, then the scale of it is worth your time. But a $5 muffin tin? That's what Target or something is for.

[naomikritzer]

You are almost certainly correct. Target charges more like $10 for their muffin tins, but it's worth the extra $5 to have a line that moves quickly and a store that doesn't make me trudge through every department to get to check out.

We had no Ikea in town back when we were setting up our first apartment, but what they sell is so entirely not to Ed's tastes that I don't think we'd have bought much there, anyway.

[coldtortuga.livejournal.com]

I get nauseous just thinking about a weekend "jaunt" down to IKEA. But my Jen suggests it, about once a month, and we end up there about once every other month.

Some of their stuff is quite nice: I rather like our 7' lightweight birch bookshelves. And some of their stuff is crap: a teakettle where the sole opening is the spout?!? And the speed at which their personnel go about their jobs is simply breathtaking, if you've always had the urge to snap into a homicidal killing spree but have never quite gotten around to it.

[trinitysite.livejournal.com]

Ikea is wonderful for cheap furniture that might not last two moves (but we live in hope that, by two moves, we might have enough money to by real furniture, or possibly even a condo, so we won't have to move again.) However, the activity of actually being in the store (complete with Ikea lunch) is terrifying.

[darkchallenger.livejournal.com]

I rarely go the MOA and I've yet to go to Ikea. Maybe if they sold books. I just go to libraries and bookstores on my free time from working at the library and the bookstore.

[imponderabilias.livejournal.com]

I can imagine enjoying a trip to IKEA. The key factor would be that my children would be at home (or at least elsewhere). On our one trip there, my son started freaking out at the "creepyness" of the warehouse section, so we grabbed our (real wood at least) bookcases and skedaddled out fast, without even trying meatballs or waffles or whatever weird things they had at the end of the checkout. Also, didn't like the idea of dropping our kids off in the play area (and I know my daughter wouldn't go for that), though I hear people do it (and abuse it) all the time.