IKEA Rocks But I Never Go

In bed with IKEA

I love IKEA, I really do. Their new catalogue came out this week and, as ever, I hurried to get my hands on a copy. There’s something to their style, their look-and-feel that draws me like a polar bear to a frontier town’s garbage bin. Yum, goodies, I always go.

Of course, IKEA being Swedish, I have a soft spot for the company, like I have a soft spot for the country. I have a history there, you see. I adore the tale of its founder Ingvar Kamprad and his Affordable Solutions for Better Living. The company also strongly focuses on ethical and ecological production and, like its compatriot and my other favourite Volvo, has a high sense of aesthetics as well.

In fact, I like IKEA so much my flat should be full of it.

But it isn’t. I checked.

It turns out that, except for a tiny bedside cupboard and a kitchen sieve perhaps, I hardly have anything from their shops. My sofa is IKEA, but I got that off a friend, so technically that doesn’t count. Given the fact that I don’t mind the slightest that you have to assemble your own stuff, that is odd.

So what’s the problem?

I hate getting there. IKEA’s economical pricing is the result of a rigid strategy never to build their shops anywhere near the city centre, but instead in what I call the badlands; the steppes of civilization, the Hinterland, the outback. To me, without a car, they are practically built on unsettled territory.

When you look at their new, crispy clean catalogue pictures, you get the feeling that you should live like that. You should have your arms around the lovely blond Inga. Actually, you want to shout out Hey, that’s my chair at the posing vixen in the KLUMPEN recliner.

But when you finally get there, not a lot of that bucolic Swedish feeling is left. Gone is the airy, midsummer night glow, gone are the happy families of the welfare state grinning endlessly, gazing over the vales and dales of Gotland. What you get is a suffocating 10,000 square metre coffin that you have to shuffle through, following a predetermined course, lit by lacklustre bulbs sticking out from a probably asbestos-ridden ceiling. On Saturdays, I hear, it is like the Hells of Baator.

IKEA has become a victim to its own formula of success. The clean, quirky designs with the funny names have become so iconic, so recognizable that it’s become too much. You can spot the KNÜTVIK book case or the DIPSTIK lamp shade from a mile. People in Uruzgan have them in their tents. The underground lair in Lost was probably decorated with it, including the countdown clock. In fact, when you visit friends at their house, chances are you’ll feel right at home… because it looks exactly like your place.

So, I’m happy to browse and dream but not shop. No, I’ll just hunt for bargains and the bric-a-brac of the little antique markets and get me some old, beat-up chesterfield, even if I have to miss out on the fun of assembling it myself.