furniture (and furniture buying) that makes sense

Finally went to IKEA today. I've been meaning to go there for months now just to see what it's like. And since it's on the same D.C. Beltway exit as REI (which, translated, means "the greatest store on earth"), I decided to stop by for a bit after adding to my cache of outdoor gear.

I wasn't sure what to think of it going in, as it seems to be amazingly popular with all the wrong folks. By reputation it comes off as one of those trendy fads, a new craze in home decor -- it is a Swedish chain after all, and it seems everyone in my age demographic wants to be and act European these days. But this trendiness generally dooms a place to totally suck because it'll have all the ugliest modern trash that people can dream up. Not wanting to make my humble abode look like it's inhabited by metrosexuals, I have no interest in such junk. But hey, you never know until you check it out.

Turns out I was pleasantly surprised. It has a convenient floor design to it that works very well for traffic flow and eliminates the annoying hassle of having to haul a heavy box all over the store. The upper floor is all displays (with lots of room mock-ups with the pieces labeled) and the lower floor is small stuff and Lowe's-esque warehouse space where you find the number of the piece you want and take it to the nearby checkout aisles. They have a very wide selection of furnishings and a wide range of prices too. Yeah, some of it is ugly or just plain ridiculous, such as the bright red computer desk or the stainless steel toilet seat cover. (Seriously, I couldn't make this up.) But there's a lot of really nice stuff in there at very reasonable prices. I'd go as far as saying that IKEA probably just surpassed Pier 1 Imports as Jesse's new favorite furniture store.

One distinction about IKEA's offerings jumped out at me. A lot of it just "makes sense", for lack of a better way to put it. It's versatile, ergonomic, and space-friendly in ways that the usual American stuff I see isn't.* It's as if they're aiming at folks living in small places who want to make the most of both their furniture and their living space. This is surely due in part to its roots and designers being in Europe, where not everyone lives in McMansions and wants to pile up the biggest hoard of whatever anybody else has on the block. Over there, folks get what they need to live and make it work. (As much as I don't like the Euros' ideas on a lot of things, one must give credit where it's due.) The designers at IKEA seem to realize there are people in the world who care more about making due with the living space they have than filling every room in their house with oversized fluff stuff that could only be designed to accommodate Americans' girth.

Take the computer desks, for example. (That's what I originally went in to look at, though I was quickly sidetracked by the rest of their wares.) Several had fold-up work surfaces that conveniently get out of the way when not in use, plenty of movable shelf units, modular drawers on wheels that could fit beside or under the desk, interchangeable supports, and a lot more features that don't come to mind now. The dining room sets are another example. Where else can you find a reasonable table and four chairs for $60? Sure, it's plain and the chairs are small, but it does what a dining room set needs to do and fits neatly into the smallest rooms. (The store folks wisely put a lot of stuff in small spaces and often even advertised the square footage of the display to drive the point home.) Again, a lot of those also seem to have been designed with limited space in mind.

Another thing worth mentioning is how lightweight and comparatively easy to work with most of the goods were. Yes, this can be a bad thing, and a few pieces did seem a little shoddy (some creaking, plastic connector pieces). But most of it was well-made from what I could tell -- not as strong as some other stuff one could buy, but a heck of a lot better than Wal-Mart screw-lock crap and easier to move around and rearrange than a lot of what I usually see. Not everything one owns needs to be able to ride out five tornadoes. And a lot of that bulkier stuff isn't all that well made anyway.

The one potential drawback I could see is that it all has to be assembled at home. Michelle Malkin wrote one heck of a bitch post some time back, probably a couple of years by now, about how bad their directions are for even the most simple stuff. This could lead to headaches, or worse yet, stuff that's too hard to put together well and so it ends up being rickety or wobbly or whatever. Any time user error is introduced into something, the finished product suffers.

But still, I was greatly impressed by their stock. Maybe I just don't go to the right places, but I've never seen these concepts of conserving space and maximizing resources so prevalent in any other store I've been in. I remember looking at living room sets, and none of the traditional furniture stores had jack that was reasonably small or less than several hundred dollars. Now I see why so many yuppie types are so high on IKEA. For anyone living in something other than an oversized house (i.e., pretty much everyone living in urban areas), the place is a cost-effective one stop shop for all interior needs.

* This reminds me of other great furniture "innovations" that America has imported, such as futons and simple pieces made from lightweight wood. Clearly our excess and decadence in this country have led us to take too much for granted, whereas in most of the rest of the world people still have to think about such things as functionality and versatility. It's nice, and amazing, to see stores that sell such stuff taking off in a culture that is in so many ways built around a lack of awareness of simple concepts like living within one's means and stretching one's resources.