I talk about some pretty intense things here on the blog, but today I want to talk about a lighter topic: IKEA furniture. IKEA furniture is a thread throughout my entire life. As I sat this morning, putting together a Breim wardrobe with a pink screwdriver, I waxed nostalgic about all the other wardrobes, cubbyholes, dressers, and chairs I've put together over the years. I must have assembled almost 100 pieces of IKEA furniture in my life. As someone whose life has taken him all around the country, I have often found myself in a new place, with a need for the basics, like a place to sit down. And because I'm a cheapskate, and I like modern design, I find myself wandering the endless labyrinth of IKEA one more time. From a consumer standpoint, I understand what makes IKEA so compelling: the price point, the design sensibility. But what, if anything, does IKEA mean for our immortal soul? What does it say about our culture?
As a man, what I find particularly interesting is the process of putting IKEA furniture together. I was just listening to a sports talk radio show the other day where the host was asked by his sidekick what he can do around the house. After saying that he was good at cleaning and gardening, he said that he could "never get the hang of that IKEA stuff". Building things just wasn't his strong suit, he said. As I screwed slot A into tab B this morning, I mused about the fact that putting together IKEA furniture from a box has become our closest metaphor for actually building things. For many of us, it's the closest we'll ever come to making anything with our bare hands. Sort of like buying a microwave burrito is the modern substitute for cooking. I'm not saying this is neccessarily a bad thing. But it's interesting to me. I feel sometimes like my cat, who used to take his food out of the bowl and bat it around before he ate it. You know, just to keep things interesting.
IKEA is also a cultural and conceptual background to my life. The transience of things, the ephemeral nature of my places. A while back, in what feels like another life, I sat in one place for an extended period of time. But now I move around, and my IKEA furniture is always there. No matter where I am, I can sit in one of those Poang chairs that rocks back and forth. But it isn't the same chair, of course; why bother moving IKEA stuff when you can re-purchase and re-assemble it for less than it would cost to move?
I like IKEA. But someday I will move out of the IKEA phase of my life. And when I do, I think IKEA will be the metaphor I choose to describe this period of my life.