Swedish Rabbit Hole

I have spent the last few days helping my nephew move into new digs in Boston.  He is beginning a surgical internship at a major Harvard teaching hospital.  I am so delighted to have him around.  He has an eternally optimist outlook on all things, he is smart as can be, and he loves to eat my cooking.  These qualifications rank him high on my hit parade.  Like most “kids” who are settling into their first professional job—particularly one that equates to slave labor—his apartment matches his meager paycheck in scale and amenities.  Not unsurprisingly, the situation called for a road trip.  Off we went to Ikea.

The founder of Ikea must have spent his college years tripping on psychedelic mushrooms while reading Alice in Wonderland.   The approach road—1 Ikea Way—actually feeds to the logical rear of the building.  The grand customer entrance is around back, hidden by the parking structure.  Defying every tenet of feng shui, the entrance dead-ends abruptly into a brick wall, funneling the expectant visitor up an escalator in what seems to be a reverse journey “up” a rabbit hole.  Even at this higher level we did not arrive.  Stopping just long enough to grab a really inadequate shopping bag, we are whisked upward once again to the final level.

Here, we are met by small bins of random objects.  Patterned paper dinner napkins, multi-colored drinking straws, and graphic coffee cups are interesting and impossibly cheap.  These are only teasers, designed to acclimate us to this budget Fantasyland.  The economy stands still at Ikea; price tags seem to reflect an irrational response to a dare.   My brain struggled to adjust to the prices much as my eyes would strain against a stranger’s thick glasses.

Suddenly, we are very, very small.  Chairs and sofas and beds hug the floor, scaled to maximize visual space in diminutive rooms.  The furniture evokes high design and functional basics in a single stroke.  Bold graphics tickle the senses with whimsical birds, sweet smiling bugs, and images of enchanted, animated flora.  I got lost in a forest of duvets, tried to ascend a mountain of pots and pans, and wrung my hands at infinite configurations of multi-colored cabinetry.  Kitchen gadgets abound, each one a riddle that challenges:  What do you think I can do?

The journey is agonizing.  Amusement quickly gives way to fatigue—both physical exhaustion at the endless meandering and sensory collapse from the constant stimulation.  Signs appear, taunting us to bear left and right at the same time.  One arrow promises a “short cut” while the another offers as-yet-unseen possibilities.  Do we embrace the quick retreat, or follow the grinning staff members who entreat us to follow?  There are ravens on shower curtains, and they are not at all like writing desks.

Our patience is rewarded when we find ourselves guests of honor at a strange tea party.  Small televisions are embedded incongruously, screening mindless juvenile stories in a continuous loop while small children sit dazed upon toad stools. The Mad Hatter appears, teasing that a chicken dinner is only $1.99.  He offers lingonberry sauce and creamy meatballs with a side of outrageous chocolate cake.  We yawn lazily, our fascination dissolved into a fuzzy haze as we wonder whether we control wonderland or wonderland controls us.  As we resolve to push forward, we fall without notice down another rabbit hole.

Ikea has no tolerance for frugality, demanding indiscrimination and recklessness.   At this lower level there were signs everywhere begging, “Buy me, buy me.” Try though you might to shrug off a purchase, Ikea just counters with, “Off with 15%!”  Each lamp requires a custom sized bulb.  The bed frame has quirky à la carte add-ons, like slats and a mid-beam.  Incredible must-haves keep appearing, like a sleek dimmer-switch, a foam shark wine-bottle sleeve, or funky tropical-themed flip-flops.

Finally, as we reached full stupor, all color disappeared from view.  We crossed a threshold into a world of corrugated cardboard.  Navigating the industrial landscape, we choose wisely from the coded inventory, loading our three carts to the brink.  As we assess our bounty we realize the secret behind the glitz.  Our room-filling furniture is nothing more than boards and blocks reduced to planes of particle board in six-inch-wide packaging. 

As reality seeps in, the fanciful veneer falls away.  We find ourselves once more falling through the rabbit hole, this time delivering us to our starting point where an empty car awaits our spoils.  Filling the car to capacity, we sped home silently, reassessing all pre-conceived notions of quality and value.  Is it really the Wonderland we think it is?  In a world where you seldom “get what you pay for,” could we really furnish even the smallest apartment with only $800 worth of merchandise?

In the end, we face a profound conundrum.  It is possible, we think, for good furniture to be cheap, but only time would tell whether cheap furniture could be good.  And though we realize that we have seen an assembly placed on a bed, we will never have a bed in his place without assembly.

Tomorrow's blog:  Low Spark, High Quality