Four letters. I, K, E and A; which, when put together (presumably with an Allen key) spell out the name of Sweden’s most famous exporter of flatpacks with elaborately absurd names. IKEA is not my favourite place and, as a result, we go there on a strictly ‘as needs’ basis.
Sadly for me, the need arose about two weeks ago and we duly trotted off to Springvale. If I had to describe the IKEA experience in one word, I’d go with ‘controlling’. Unlike other retail experiences, you can’t meander as you please; it’s more a ‘Wizard of Oz’ model whereby you ‘follow the yellow brick road’ past a procession of living rooms, bedrooms and studies before you stumble into a giant warehouse.
Everything about it is bewildering – the giant metal trolleys that are the size of a Toyota Corolla and steer like the Titanic; the voyeuristic living displays that ‘neat shame’ you, right through to the grisly display toilets that come fitted with plastic guards warning that it’s strictly for demonstration purposes only. It’s a nightmare, the very thought of which causes me to wake up screaming in Swedish.
Let’s back up – it occurs to me that some of you may not understand the concept of ‘neat shaming’. It’s where you’re presented with a completely unrealistic depiction of everyday life. At IKEA that comes in the form of dozens of small living and dining rooms where there’s not a thing out of place. It’s an insult. Frankly, I can’t imagine a couch that doesn’t have a discarded Two-minute noodle wrapper lying on the floor in front of it and squashed up remnants of chicken shapes rubbed into the cushions. A living room without discarded items of school uniform? Please – no such place exists.
Truth be told, it’s not that I simply don’t like IKEA. It’s that I’m afraid of it. Specifically, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to assemble the furniture because I can’t understand the diagrams. Not that we were looking for furniture.
We’ve entered a special time of life – one where crockery and utensils inexplicably vanish. One day, you’ve got a drawer full of plates. The next, the drawer is empty, as is the dishwasher and a surprise inspection of the bedrooms yields nothing you’d want to put your dinner on. Forks are also a problem. Clearly, someone I know hates forks and throws them out the window after use. It’s the only logical explanation.
Luckily for us, IKEA has both crockery and utensils in abundance. But they’re right at the end of the yellow brick road where, by rights, the Emerald City ought to be. It takes us twenty minutes to get to the bit we want before we realise that we need a trolley and forgot to pick one up at the entrance. Fearing the need to go back the way we came in, which would involve swimming against the tide for the first half and trying to navigate a slow-moving crowd whilst pushing an oversized trolley on the way back, we searched for an alternative.
After a few minutes, Katrina returned with an empty trolley that appeared to have been abandoned. Scouring the crockery section, we selected an eighteen-piece set called a ‘Godmiddag’. This seemed fitting as ‘Godmiddag’ is what we say when one of the kids breaks a plate. We then filled the trolley with as many forks as we could, believing this would get us through the next fortnight or so.
After trundling through the checkouts, we loaded our bounty into the car and headed home. It was only after we unpacked that we discovered the ‘Klockren’. Neither of us had gone to IKEA looking for a Klockren but, somehow, we had emerged with one in our possession. Which means that the empty trolley we had assumed was abandoned was, instead, nursing someone’s Klockren. In turn, the aspirant owner of the Klockren had stepped away from their trolley for a moment only to return to find it missing. We were now trolley-nappers.
The only thing worse that stealing a Klockren that doesn’t belong to you, is trying to figure out what the Klockren does. We were stumped. It was a silver contraption with metal leaves that folded over each other. Was it a peeler? An exotic European ashtray? We couldn’t tell. After several days of trying to solve the riddle that was the Klockren, Katrina pulled the metal stems to reveal some kind of steamer. Which, if I’m being honest, made me think that we’d done someone a favour by taking their trolley.
A few weeks later, I’m none the wiser as to how we took someone’s trolley and deprived them of their Klockren. Yesterday I opened a drawer and found it had no plates in it, following which I raised both my fists in the air and cried ‘Godmiddag!’ And on the subject of forks, I’ve reached something of a fork in the road and am seriously considering making a permanent shift to ‘woons’. How did all this happen? I don’t know. Because like so many things that come from IKEA, try as I might, I just can’t put it together.