Ikea is one of those highly envied and much imitated monolithic institutions that have managed to secure one of the rarest and highly desired consumer commodities: trust, familiarity, and a feeling of comfort felt almost unilaterally throughout their diverse consumer base. Is it that unpronounceable word Hygge manifest that makes their stores so deeply loved and universally appealing, or an ingenious marketing schema tailored to the minute details of the consumer cultures each of their stores adopt to? There's a similarity throughout Ikeas worldwide that makes them a comforting, familiar sort of place, whether you're shopping outside of Tokyo, South of Seattle, in Vegas or China... but, naturally, the store does adapt some of its design aesthetics to suit the needs of the particular location's culture and needs. That's just smart marketing and business, right? You probably won't find many Japanese homes with extensive, open design kitchens so there will be little tweaks to their displays to make their designs work in the space given your typical consumer. Even with these little details taken into consideration, there's that ever present familiarity of wandering in a perpetual state of nearly-lost through the winding labyrinth and neon-glow of your local Ikea. Surely the same technology used for the Doctor's TARDIS can account for the immensity of the spaces once you're inside because they never seem quite so big enough to account for it all on the outside.
Not only are there countless tasteful, or trend-conscious, or outright outlandish, furniture and decoration choices to be found in your local Ikea, but their food counter is legit, too! And, naturally, most of the food available for consumption in their cafeteria is also available to take home to enjoy from their small grocery corner, which, after building up an appetite winding your way through countless displays and mock bedrooms, may end up being all the more appealing. We were hungry upon our arrival, so we opted to grab some food before shopping, which was a good idea, I think. We ended up ordering a lot of stuff, and between the food coma slipping over Antho and my guts deciding to revolt against life, the universe, and everything, it was a shopping trip made more interesting due to digestion. Good stuff. In the end, I did manage to find a desk and a new desk chair, after retiring my much beloved and long-suffering desk and chair from Vegas, which has followed me through multiple residences and been stuffed into multiple vehicles. When it came time to move our lives, and all of our collective STUFF, up to Washington, I was happy to let my old desk and chair go, for free, to a new owner. While we'd been putting a lot of our stuff out on the curb to awake and find it gone, during our last day or two of clearing out we met one of the neighbors who'd gathered most of it and simply gave the rest to him to do with what he pleased. We had old bicycles that needed a little repair to be usable, furniture we wouldn't be taking, all sorts of stuff. Worked out well for us, and for our friendly neighbor! 💗
As far as our visit to Ikea on this particular day, I managed to find a computer desk that works well for me. While, originally, I'd had my eye on a particular model with an attached shelf, I'm happy with the options I ended up selecting. It was a lot more affordable, thanks to Christina explaining more of the Ikea hacks to me, like selecting your table top and then buying legs of your own choosing. Naturally, I ended up picking out legs that didn't really work with the holes pre-drilled into the desktop I chose, but Antho managed to make it work. A true #Ikeahack! Might make it a little more iffy when we have to move the desk at a later point in time, but, uh, let's save that obstacle for the future for now. As of this moment in time, I have a wonderful desk that serves its purpose with ample space for me to obsessively work at my planner, my morning pages project, our Etsy, my blog, and all the photo-editing and video-editing to come. It's a real workhorse, my desk.
