No residential move is complete without a post-furnishing trip to Ikea.
Six years ago, the closest Ikea was in North Jersey. Three of us rented an SUV and left at 6am. We returned at 10pm. I can remember unloading the car in the dark, staring at the tiny pictures on the identical sheets of corrugated cardboard packaging: “Are these my shelves? Whose Kolsvik is this? What the hell is a Jerker?”
Three years ago, Ikea had inched closer in Connecticut. Still, interstate highway travel didn’t exactly soothe my nerves after fighting through the packed, chaotic showroom and having a nervous breakdown in the self-service furniture warehouse while picking out the parts of my bed.
Now the Boston metro area has an Ikea of its very own in Stoughton, not 30 minutes from my house. Having a close-by Ikea takes the edge off the decision-making. We got a new coffee table, two table tops and eight legs, a few rugs, a Leksvik chest with 5 drawers, and a Leksvik linen closet, all of which fit neatly into the back of a Honda Civic. Ah, the wonders of flat-packed furniture…
And self-assembly. Says Ikea’s website “While our furniture may seem attractive on the showroom floor, it takes on a whole new kind of beauty inside the cardboard boxes.” Yes, the beauty of picking through bags of widgets and screws, of squinting at the instructions and counting holes to figure out the orientation of a wooden plank, of discovering the hex key has bored away the skin on your index finger. The beauty of a Leksvik linen closet (pictured right), standing intact, holding towels.
