Less than a month ago, Ikea held a grand opening to celebrate the first store in Michigan. After hearing stories about how people make pilgrimages across the country, across the world, to help Ikea celebrate a new arrival, I decided to wait a while before checking out the new (to me) store. During my wait, I heard crazy stories about cops directing traffic into their two parking lots, people complaining about lines of cars waiting to get in backing up onto the expressway, and hoards of people camped out in front of the store a week before grand opening. They're not kidding when they describe Ikea as a way of life for some people....
Tom and I, in desparate need of some bookcases and other odds and ends, decided to trek out to Ikea to see what it was all about. Of course, I did my shopping online first, made up a little shopping list with names and sizes and colors to make things a little easier on us. I even went so far as to measure the inside of my car, to ensure that we would, in fact, be able to cart our findings home. Thankfully, Ikea publishes both the item dimensions as well as the packaging dimensions on their website. Unfortunately, we found the packaging dimensions to be incorrect once it came time to collect our items for purchase. Even for some of the larger items, Ikea claims they come in one big box. This is far from true when we noticed that one bookcase we needed came in two boxes, and the other came in three. In the end, we could only take one of the bookcases, and it came down to what we could actually fit in my car without strapping it to the roof, or driving 50+ miles with my trunk open.
Despite the hundreds of people shuffling their way through the store like a herd of cattle heading off to the slaughter, I enjoyed my trip to Ikea. Yeah, there were a few times where I wanted to go look at one particular display, but couldn't because the flow of traffic just wouldn't let me go. For most of our tour of the store, we had to view items from a far as we shuffled by. No time or room to stop. Anywhere. But, its a big store with so much to see, its probably a good thing the masses hurried us along to collect our things and head home. Since we had no other choice but to bring him, Robert came along for the trip as well...increasing my frustration with both him specifically, and kids in crowded spaces in general. For reasons unbeknownst to me, Robert spent a good portion of the trip crying and sniffling to himself. I'm thinking its mainly to do with the fact that we made him stop playing video games before we left, so he was pouty about that, and since Tom wasn't paying much attention to him being whiney, it just made things worse. At one point, we were standing in front of the nightstands in the bedroom section trying to pick out a nightstand for Robert, and all he could do was sit there smearing snot across his face and whine "I don't know" every time we asked him which nightstand he wanted. We figured that if we let him make the decision, it make make him a little happier, but no...misery continued the rest of the trip, for the rest of the night even.
As I mentioned earlier, our first experience at Ikea was rather similar to a herd of cattle heading to the slaughter, with all the shuffling around a laid out track. The check out experience further engrained that picture in my mind as we wheeled our cart to get in line for the registers at the end of very long chutes. At first our line was moving pretty quickly...until I noticed that one of the people ahead of us actually had three carts for themselves....and made multiple transactions. Ugh. I hate it when people do that. But there was no escaping it since we were now so close to the registers, and looking back behind us, the lines were continually growing longer and longer as more people piled up to get through the registers and out of the building.
Our first trip to Ikea was kind of stressful, but very successful. I say first trip because we already know we're going back to get the rest of the stuff we need. We're hoping to get more time to browse around next time, sans Robert perhaps? I don't know, thats kind of a tricky thing to plan around since Tom never tells me who has Robert when.... But, we still have one more bookcase to get for the room in the basement, and perhaps a few other odds and ends. I'm hoping the next trip isn't as expensive as the first, since our bill racked up over $300. But considering everything we got, I was expecting well over $400.
Our first shopping trip to Ikea:
- One 5'x5' bookcase
- Three desk lamps
- A track lighting fixture with five spotlights
- three wall storage shelving units
- a night stand
Surprisingly enough, I was able to fit all of that in my car. Just as it started raining, no less....