The Many Stages of Ikea Furniture
The Week in Selfies: 7/20/20 - 7/26/20
Hello newsletter readers. It’s hot so I’ve been inside a lot. How are you?
Three housekeeping things:
I’m adding an additional perk to paid subscriptions! And by perk, I mean another edition! Exciting! Starting next week, the last Tuesday of the month, I’ll be sending out a newsletter of rejection haikus. Yes, that is haikus I write with words from real live rejection emails I receive. So, if you aren’t a paid subscriber and that sounds interesting to you, you know what to do.
The subscription-related donation project continues! The organization for July is Indigenous Women Rising. If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher about the project, you can always find more details of the project on my About page.
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And, as always, thank you for being here. It really means so much to me.
Congratulations! You need new furniture. Let’s begin at the very beginning.
Move into a place all by yourself. Realize that you don’t have enough furniture to fill a whole apartment.
Browse the Ikea website. Have particular items that you need. Get distracted by weird home decor things. Get distracted by new lighting possibilities. Remember what you are looking for and browse those things. Want everything that is out of your price range but put it on a wishlist anyway. Also put things you can afford on that wishlist. Realize your wishlist is pages and pages long. Promise yourself you’ll go back and pare it down later. That’s a job for later Samantha. She’ll be much better at that. More rational. More logical. Shut your computer. Get a snack. It’s cookie time.
The time to place an order is now. You have to. You can’t wait any longer. Go to your Ikea wishlist. Current Samantha will pare this down. Probably. …well, actually, just put nearly everything you want in your cart and sort through it there. Go to your cart. It’s got a price tag you wouldn’t ever be able to afford unless you trip on a million dollars. Finally, pare it down to a “reasonable” price. Place your order.
Wait three or more weeks for your order to be delivered. You have a bed set up and a temporary desk and it’s a pandemic so you can wait. Impatiently. But you’ll wait. It’s time for another snack.
Decorate and redecorate your space in your head. It’s all yours so literally anything goes. Within the square footage, that is. All of a sudden be unsure if you measured everything correctly. No, you did. You totally measured well.
Your Ikea order has arrived! Move all the boxes into the living room which you just finally mostly cleared of boxes. Past Samantha dies a little inside. The cardboard was all gone. And now, it’s all back. Heavy sigh.
Unbox and put up the small stuff. Like a corkboard. Unbox and put away easy stuff. Like cocktail glasses. Look at the bigger things and decide that future Samantha will have more energy to put it all together.
Today is the day! Current Samantha is going to put it all together.
Unbox the dresser. Yes, it has drawers but it can’t be that hard.
Put on a fun playlist. The choice for home stuff is almost always the Super 70s Saturday Night Playlist. (It is called that because when you were a kid, your family always listened to a radio show called Super 70s Saturday Night on a Spokane radio station. Sometimes you called in requests. Like the Time Warp. Or Joy to the World. Or The Streak.)
Look at the instructions. Oh, you think there should be two people to put it together, Ikea? TOO BAD. YOU JUST HAVE ME.
Start putting the dresser together. It goes well for a while. A decent amount of time actually. Then put the tracks for a drawer on backwards. Take them off and put them back on. Now they are on upside down. Take them off. Try them on a different drawer. Still mess it up. Get frustrated. Walk away.
Get a snack. Stand in the doorway and stare at the pile of particleboard on the ground. Regret not leaving all your clothes in boxes and living out of cardboard. That would have been fine, right? You could paint them fun colors! You see no issues.
Be hit with a second wind. You are strong, smart, organized, motivated, resourceful, funny. You have nice hair. You read a lot. Look at all these damn books in the bookshelves to your right. …realize you should maybe add mantras into your daily routine. This is a lot of hyping up you need just to finish putting together this relatively small dresser from the Swedish ruler of flatpack furniture.
Get down to business. Put the whole dresser together relatively easy this time. Sometimes turning yourself off and then back on again really works.
Move the dresser into place and insert the final drawer. You did it! You are the master!
Take a selfie of triumph to prove what a badass you are.
Go to the living room and stare at the other boxes of furniture for five straight minutes.
Decide that’s a later Samantha problem. She’ll hate you but you won’t be around to know that. So.
Wonder why there are so many stages to Ikea furniture. Get a snack.
Monday, July 20, 2020
What can I say? I love kitchen gadgets.
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
I am eating this chocolate granita recipe in this picture. Good. Easy. Nice for a hot day.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Step 17.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
I’m always just a little bit helter skelter.
Friday, July 24, 2020
For happy hour this week, we dressed like our moms. If you know my Mom at all, you’ll know I nailed it. (My Mom sent me a text this week that said, “I’m obsessed with jean jackets. Lol.”)
Saturday, July 25, 2020
A tired helter skelter.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Who doesn’t love an instagram filter?
This week, paying subscribers learned about the time I swung around a real live very sharp broadsword and also fell asleep on stage. If that sounds intriguing to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.