IKEA

buying things to put my things in

My mother is visiting Toronto, and last night she napped on my couch while I napped in my room, and after we woke up we struggled to think of what to do. We couldn’t find any especially fun events to go to, and we were still full from the pho we’d had from Vit Beo that afternoon, and my legs were too sore from a long run I’d done to brook a gallery visit, or anything like that, where you have to stand for a long time, so we went to IKEA.

My mother had been excited to ask me whether I knew, and, on learning that I did not, tell me, about the IKEA in downtown Toronto. And I was excited to go because I recently acquired an Ikea KALLAX square shelf unit (fig. 1).

Fig. 1, IKEA KALLAX, Internet Archive

However, with the shelf, which had been given to me by my employer when they were shutting the office (going “fully remote”), I had received none of the recognizable square boxes (fig. 2) that can fit within the cubes. It was my intention to secure some of these from IKEA.

Fig. 2, DRÖNA box, IKEA

When we arrived at IKEA we realized we were quite thirsty, and thought that it could be nice to carry tea around with us while we shopped, so we sought the cafe, where people often eat Swedish meatballs when they go to IKEA. We went to the counter to order, but the lady told us we had to use the kiosk. It turned out they only had “tea,” which my mother and I agreed meant caffeinated. The simplicity of this offering risked offending the North American sensibility that demands choice.

We looked around the space for other options and found in a display fridge by the counter two bottles of pear-flavored sparkling water. I took the bottles from the display fridge, which disturbed my mother, as she assumed that we would have to pay for the pear water at the kiosk, but then wait for the cashier to retrieve the bottles from the display fridge. I dismissed her concerns, and, completing the transaction, pointed out that we had the receipt, so we were beyond reproach.

As we were leaving the cafe, I saw the cashier place two bottles of pear water on the counter in front of her and call out the number “four-twenty-nine?!”

Upstairs, we found a cornucopia of KALLAX boxes, boxes of every color, material, and shape that a shopper could desire—moreover, we found inserts that could be installed in the cubic shelves: drawers, doors, and smaller shelves, even rhombus shelves in which wine bottles could be stored. It became a matter of deciding what array of these shelves would best effect the storage of my various possessions.

We settled on two kinds of cube boxes, one yellow paper one and three white plastic ones, and two kinds of shelf inserts, one with four little shelves and one with two, which we reasoned would keep neat my notebooks and the draft of my manuscript. However, it was difficult to find the double‑ and quadruple‑shelf inserts. They were displayed in the Living Room Organization section, and the product tag said they could be collected from the very same section, yet no packages were forthcoming.

Eventually, my mother found the packages in the “Furniture Self-Serve” section—she is a seasoned IKEA shopper, having often gotten her two prodigal children “set up” in various apartments across the country.

Meanwhile, as we were collecting cubic boxes for our KALLAX, we noticed cuboid boxes cast in a very tasteful taupe composite with bamboo lids, which were called KUGGIS—we found this diminutive name amusing, and repeated “KUGGIS” aloud as we inspected the different sizes of box, calling out “mini KUGGIS,” “big KUGGIS,” and “tiny KUGGIS” as we deliberated. We eventually settled on some mini and some medium KUGGISes.

The result of all this shopping was that we now had far too much for me to carry home, especially since my legs were extremely sore from my run. We wondered what could be done, and saw on the wall a poster that read “Ask Us About Delivery.” When we went with our cart—full with perhaps twenty different storage solutions—to the cash area, we “Asked About Delivery” to the gentleman who was overseeing the nine self-checkouts.

“We don’t do delivery from this location,” he said.