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| - A big wooden spool seized from a construction site for use as a coffee table, cinder blocks and plywood rigged to form bookcases, a mattress and box springs just sitting on the floor; I am Jack's pathetically inadequate furniture budget. This is what I imagine my apartment would look like without Ikea. Instead, thanks to affordable Swedish design and a little OCD, I've had guests who just met me wonder if I'm gay. As someone who's confident in his masculinity, I'll take that as a compliment. Thank you!
"But the furniture is so cheap! It only lasts a couple years," I hear people say, as if that's a bad thing. If you're anything like me, you want to mix things up every couple years anyway. Sure, if you're looking to spend thousands for family heirlooms to pass down to your grandkids, you should go elsewhere. I'll take lightweight, environmentally friendly, and stylishly minimalist furniture over the much heavier, far more expensive and boring mumsy alternative any day.
Others will argue that it's all so mass produced and corporate, as if the same couldn't be said of the clothes on their backs, the drink in their hands and virtually everything else they own. Unless you've got "job creator" money you can't afford to have everything made one of a kind just for you. Get over it and find some other way to express your individualism in this era of post-industrial consumerist ennui. Or remind yourself that you're not your f#cking khakis and stop defining yourself by your possessions.
So Tyler Durden got it all wrong. It's Ikea's low prices and one might even say semi-disposable nature of the furniture that keeps you owning your possessions rather than your possessions owning you. How can it really be said something owns you that you are so easily able to replace?
As for the store itself, what's not to like? Sure, it can get crowded on the weekends, around the holidays and back-to-school time. Any store that isn't crowded at those times is doing something very wrong. It's a great place to spend a lazy day. The sample apartments that get smaller and smaller as you go are reason enough to check out the store at least once. The cafeteria food is really cheap and pretty good. And finally, if you've miraculously managed to make it all the way through the store without buying anything, the fantastic $1 dollar cinnamon rolls you can't help but smell as you leave the store are a dirty trick to which you won't mind falling victim. And if the cinnamon rolls don't get you the $.50 hotdogs and $1 pizza slices surely will. You may want to turn around and take another lap or two of the store to burn off the calories.
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