Ikea

Look at this explosion of nuts, bolts, wires and assorted metal doo-dats. Just look at it.

It’s the first page of the instruction booklet for the rowing machine I recently purchased from my local Big W, and the large black words on the side of the box said “easy to assemble”. Easy my big fat (but for long!) backside.

I bought the machine having spotted it in a mailbox catalogue. The catalogue said nothing about self-assembly until the extremely fine print on the very last page, which I originally missed. So when I went to the store, I was a little surprised they gave me a box. Like I say, though, the box said “easy to assemble”.

Continue reading "Friday Dilemma: Does this look “easy to assemble”?" »

Every house needs a Designated Assembler. Presumably, some houses sprout many, where the genetic soil is of the right variety, but every house needs at least one. I am the DA in our house.

Some houses contain a person who was born to the role: the type who looks under their own bonnet before they call for roadside assistance, or can watch a toilet overflow without going to water themselves.

In other houses, the position of DA falls to the least worst candidate - someone who, quite unjustly, ends up with the job simply because everyone else has established their utter ineptitude.  Accordingly, some DAs are chosen by destiny while others are chosen by default.

Continue reading "Every house needs someone to handle those fiddly jobs" »

Ikea dearest, I remember the excitement as your latest tome plopped into my letterbox with the all the promise of how shiny, organised and streamlined my life would be if I married my dollars to your flat-pack.

I enter your hallowed halls with expectations and delight, with wonderment in your innovations and pleasure in your primary colours.

Seven hours later, I emerged with the truth from the ‘Seventh Circle of Hell’ you call a store, the veil of infatuation torn from my eyes; having been funneled like a drugged lemming through your maze-like halls amidst aisles of numbered items and towers of indecipherably coded boxes.

Continue reading "Hell has been franchised and it’s hiding in the suburbs" »

Six more IKEA stores might sound like a bad thing - particularly if you’re the sort that doesn’t enjoy its giant maze-like outlets - but rival retailers may be secretly pleased the furniture giant is expanding.

Like retail remora fish, these smaller retailers make a living feeding off the Swedish DIY’s back, even as it devours a juicy chunk of the homewares market.

And the key is our instatiable desire to beautify our nests, combined with the sheer drawing power of IKEA.

Continue reading "The IKEA honey trap and why we love it" »