the magical land of IKEA

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Be Brave, Not Beige

Last week I randomly suggested Josh and I should make a trip to IKEA. Josh was thrilled; you would have thought that I just told him he was getting a brand new bicycle. He was so excited that he spent the next 2 hours scouring the IKEA website. We hadn't been in forever and after all this talk of redoing our bedroom...well, I decided we should go.

I'm not sure why so many people turn up their noses at IKEA furniture and such. I guess because it's cheap. I really like the style of a lot of their stuff. I don't care that it doesn't cost that much. In fact, that makes me like it even more! Come on, let's bring style to the masses. It's like Target doing the designer clothes. "Design for All"...way to go, Target.

We made it in about two hours only going about 5 minutes out of our way after missing the I-355 exit. Watch out for that construction, folks. It was nuts. We arrived so excited to get in there and started! I'm always floored by just how big that place is. And it's amazing the number of people coming in and out of it...it is so busy.

The first thing we saw when we got there was the Poang chair that Josh has wanted for 3 years. We hadn't really planned on buying it but it was added to our sheet, just in case. I had brought a list of things I wanted to make sure I looked at, like the nightstands. By the end of the trip, we ended up filling our cart and one of those trolleys.



I was so excited to get these three little vases. They were $1.99 a piece and so very Jonathan Adler, don't you think?



Got this little teapot for $4.99. So cute and much cheaper than anything I had found around here. It's perfect for heating water for our French press.



We also got three Malma mirrors for $1.99 each. I got just the naked wood ones so I can paint them white or yellow and put them in our bedroom when it's done. And a few other things I found:



We did also get our nightstands and Josh's chair (which he had put together in like 10 minutes because he was so excited about it).



One thing I was very excited about is IKEA's new "Bag the Plastic Bag" program. For 59 cents you can buy a flippin' huge reusable bag instead of using plastic bags. The bag filled up the bottom of the cart...it was that big! IKEA is starting to charge five cents for every plastic bag you use. Instead we just bought one of the reusable bags. For the first year of the blue bag program, they are going to donate all proceeds to American Forests. I think I'm going to start taking that bag to Meijer with us and just have them put our groceries or whatever in that. I'm a big fan of IKEA's position on environmental issues.



It was such a good day and we felt like we really got some cool stuff. I really am a big fan of IKEA. (Few more photos on Flickr.)

Labels: apartment living, be green, retail therapy

posted by kimberly, 7:05 AM