Rusted Sky

Sue asked the other day just what it was I liked about IKEA. I considered it a bit, and decided there's three things.

1. They've got a sense of humor, and try to spread it.
2. They've got a WIDE variety of good products for a reasonable price.
3. They try to make shopping as pleasant as possible.

I've liked the spare, clean lines of Scandanavian furniture for a long time. (Part of that's my parent's fault - you grow up in a house cluttered with antiques and French Provincial furniture and you'd be looking for clean and uncluttered too... which is odd because I always manage to accumulate clutter. Go figure.) I've heard about IKEA for years from folks in the NE section - it seemed to be the Holy Grail of good&cheap stylish furniture, and heaven knows we didn't have much of THAT here in the '80s in Atlanta. (Sauder. Whee. And furniture stores that either cost an arm and a leg for decent furniture, or had tacky cheap stuff. Seemed like there was no alternative.)

So when they finally got one here in Atlanta, there was a good bit of rejoicing. We waited until the initial excitement died down, and then went down one evening and had dinner in their cafeteria, then browsed the store. And it wasn't like anything I'd seen in a store before. It wasn't shopping through areas of furniture and then areas of accessories - they folded the two together in their displays and showed how things fit together well, and had sample setups which showed all their product lines. Their 'living in 350 sq. ft." sample apartment was impressive - though you got the feeling that you'd need a lot of discipline to avoid buying an extra cushion for the couch, which would start a chain reaction and have your entire apartment explode outward.

It was a department store done the way Disney would do it - colorful, attractive products, with a sense of humor and style.

Of course, their style isn't for everyone. There's so many different furniture styles that it's impossible to put together a One Size Fits All store. (Those who have tried, like Levitz and Haverty's, end up seeming to me like a scattered, random arrangement of furniture groupings, with the occasional vastly overpriced accessory put on to show that indeed the furniture will bear the weight of knickknacks.. and then they end up focusing on high-end 'traditional' furniture.) And that's fine - there's folks who want the heavy stuff. Styles change, tastes vary over the years. What's popular one decade, you can't get rid of at a garage sale ten years later... and it's the rage again ten years after that.

IKEA's housewares section... again, good stuff at a good price. They've got a little bit of everything, from skillets to dish draining racks.

And they're even making houses...

You know, in 20 years they might just take over the world....

J.