I heart Ikea!

So I'm living in NYC now. This was my dream and now it's happening.

I really needed to get new furniture so before I moved I took a trip to Ikea. Now I had only heard about this place and never had seen it. I remember one day when I was little, a catalogue from Ikea came in the mail. I looked through it and saw that they had a children's play area with a ball pit!! This made me want to visit the store even though I had no idea what they sold. The thought of this giant (or so I thought) room filled with balls that I could play in while my parents shopped, really excited me. So fast forward to last week when I actually stepped foot into this place that I'm sure I had dreamed about.

I was shocked at the enormity of the "showroom". The furniture was amazingly cute and there was so much to choose from. The folks in Sweden got it right, cheap and adorable furniture! My head started to swivel as I looked around at the couches and desks and knicknacks. They had thought of everything. I was planning my dream house in my head when I was snapped back to reality. I had one 10 by 12 room to furnish. As a smart consumer, I had done my research online before actually heading to the store.

I found my furniture set and feel in love. The fake wood look was the winner and I went to go find the box to take it to the register when my eyebrows wrinkled up and I saw in front of me a little red tag that told me what bin and aisle to pick up my furniture. Little did I know how they were able to keep the prices crazy low. I went over to a handy Ikea employee and she helped me to find all the correct coding to use down in the warehouse. I was confused because I thought the showroom was the warehouse being that the ceilings were high.

I took my printed sheet with lots of numbers on it to the warehouse where as a spoiled girl, I thought someone would collect my boxes for me. Well, nope not the case. My dad and I took the flat cart and began filling it. The thing that Ikea decided was to put all the pieces in different boxes. So my bed, for example, was in 4 boxes! The weight of these boxes was backbreaking but Ikea was once again smart and somehow made everything flat. After we collected all the parts and checked out, (yay super cheap!) we had to puzzle piece fit the boxes into the car. In the pouring rain!

Putting the million pieces together is a whole other story. Just think of an instruction manual with pictures of the little Ikea man with a question mark over his head. 7 hours of hard labor! It was a long day with a dad and boyfriend who were not good with reading instructions. But now I have beautiful furniture!!
After all that I would still go back to Ikea to get more furniture. It's like having a baby (I wouldn't know but what from what I heard it hurts, a lot) and forgetting the pain and looking forward to a beautiful new room!