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Why I can't stand IKEA

They got me. Along with millions of others. I'm no longer unique. No longer a hold out. No longer a spectator. I'm just like the rest. I ran right off the cliff with the rest of the herd. I suppose I would call it jealously more than anything. I'm guess I'm somewhat envious of Mr. IKEA who has figured out a way to repeatedly and painfully victimize me into wasting my precious Saturday mornings and hard earned money on obtaining new items in a profound fashion.
Once being bribed and convinced of the need to uproot myself from a once pleasant weekend morning, the journey starts way too early with a couple of pushes on the i(kea)-phone in order to take a taxi (via Grab app) to the IKEA penitentiary.
Let the root canal begin.
Once arriving at the ant colony, I'm forced by the crowd down a narrow habit trail as the entrance slowly fades away behind me. This is about the time the equivalent to water boarding begins.  My senses become overwhelmed at the various lights, signs, products, chatter, etc. Blood pressure increases and breathing becomes laborious as I watch my fellow prisoners, who appear to be oddly enjoying this experience, load up their wheeled loot holders. The following hour or two is just a blur and it all runs together like bad water color painting.
I now prepare myself for the displeasure of temporarily being held hostage for a few hours by mood altering display nooks littered with unavoidable reduced pricing signs that have a Pavlovian effect on a certain gender of shopper. The slow motion action of one by one removing dollar bills from my wallet starts to play over and over in my head as I start to grow weary, sauntering down the path of least resistance.
Naturally all of this activity makes you hungry. Mr. IKEA does not want hungry prisoners so he has constructed a way to extract more money from each unsuspecting inmate. After finding a temporary place to store your gatherings you must divide and conquer. One of you must go secure and eating location while the other waits in a long line for a 1/2 hour minimum to obtain the food. If you do not time this right you may find yourself with nowhere to eat as the other prisoners do not care to part with thier places at the tables. Seasoned inmates know the routine. The ratio of food sold vs. places to sit are highly offset. Mr. IKEA does not care if you have to stand and eat so as long as you get enough calories in to finish the march of shame up to the check out line.
The post-meal second round of pain begins. I start to sweat as I'm lead back into general population. It's an apprehensive aggravation type of sweat. After all, I'm spending MY time and MY money as the painfully obvious becomes inevitable. My shopping cart is getting fuller the farther I wade into the abyss of consumables. At this point I'm seemingly unable to escape this insanity. This explains why there are no windows from which to make a freedom leap.
As I continue to serve out my sentence for hours while being inundated by "on sale" signs and dimmed lighting displays that tap into one's emotional side, I now start to sympathize with my captor. It is now that I get the pleasure of waiting in a long line to exchange my hard earned cash for items in my cart.
I take a sigh of relief as I feel like the finish line is within reach. The light at the end of the tunnel is growing larger.
In hindsight, I wish my future self could time travel back to my current self, tap me on the shoulder and say, "Go to Starbucks instead", or "say you have to work", or "pretend your wallet was stolen yesterday", then miraculously find it Monday morning, or fake an injury.
After waiting in what seems to be the 10th line of the day, an Aussie mate must have seen the steam leaving my now crimson colored face, when he taps me on the shoulder and says, "Hey mate, they serve cold beer right over there".
I contemplate the desire to satisfy my thirst as I wait in the next tortuous line. The problem is, access to one cold beer comes at not only an increased price but also, yes, you guessed it, another line.
As I stand and wait (seats are taken up) for my number to come up I see zombie like people pick up their items as they are "delivered" through the double warehouse themed doors. This time they've assigned me a unique number to watch for on a big screen. Maybe this is so I don't leave feeling non-unique.
The pain infliction persists like rheumatoid arthritis.

Once all of the loot has been paid for I now get to escort two separate wheeled carts down a level to the parking area where I get to.........yup, you guessed it, wait in another fine line. This is in an effort to obtain a taxi van to cargo my items home. Once it was our turn in the taxi que, the van driver shouts and points. He assists me in loading all of our depreciating assets into the back of the van. He then says, "Woman up front, you in back". So I hopped in the back for a long bumpy ride home in stop and go traffic with no seatbelt sitting on top of something plywood-like with my butt bouncing around on it like a ping pong ball.
Once arriving home shaken and beyond words, it is my duty to make sure all of our goods get unloaded and taken up a flight of stairs from the basement parking. I take out some aggression by seeing how much I can carry up a flight of stairs. Once at the top, there's an odd feeling of destruction that makes me want to send the packed IKEA box bounding down the stairs hitting every corner on the way but I quell my desire to do so.
Finally the purchased packages have found their final pre-assembly destinations.
Now it's time to put spend a few hours putting it all together. Lucky me. Check out the videos below to see how I did it.
I consider myself a good sport and can generally endure most things. However, this experience put my good hearted nature to the test. In reflection I ask why would anyone....ever....ever.....go to IKEA!

Follow along with me in my IKEA "HUTTON" Bottle Rack Assembly DIY Instructional Tutorial Video. These racks are nice for wine, vinegar, beer, etc. The HUTTON model from IKEA is really easy to assemble and you can stack them one on top of each other as high as you want. All you need is a cordless drill or screwdriver with the correct size Allen head (hex head) bit. I believe the kit comes with a little metal Allen wrench if you don't have one. This is a simple one person assembly. I recommend you get a nice flat surface to work from whether that be your kitchen table, work bench, or even sitting on the floor. 
Here's the link to it: https://amzn.to/32aLnOD

in me during this IKEA “KNAGGLIG” Assembly Tutorial-Simple IKEA Crate Box Assembly video. As another idea, instead of buying these from IKEA, you could make some nice crates like this out of pallets.

DIY IKEA Brand "OMAR" Model Wire Storage Racks-Basic Assembly Directions

As much as I despise setting foot in IKEA having to deal with the crowds and  navigate through the habit trail of items that we can live without but must have, these wire rack shelves are actually pretty nice. The model style or type is called "OMAR". Assembly time is less than 15 minutes or so per section of shelf. The nice thing about these is that you assemble them and purchase them one section at a time which lends to their versatility. They have engineered these wire racks to not be too cumbersome and to hug the wall as much as possibly without any wasted space. They are a most efficient use of space. Practically anyone can put this thing together with zero tools. The only thing you will potentially need a few tools for is securing this to the wall. Securing it to the wall is important and probably overlooked many times but once you start assembling and stacking more than one section of these shelves they can become top heavy and a safety hazard. So I do recommend you secure these to the wall especially if you have young ones around who would find shelving units such as these a perfect structure for climbing.

Out of all of the shelving units I've assembled in my life, these are probably the easiest. I have some experience with these in the past as Costco used to sell them and maybe they still do. They were a little more costly than these but they were also more robust. One thing I did like was that they give you an extra shelf clamp as part of each kit just in case one doesn't snap in perfectly (which would result in the shelf being useless) or if one breaks for becomes lost. Anything extra in kits of any kind of item these days is a rarity so this is appreciated and even more so if needed to be used. You will also find yourself with an extra set of adjustable feet if you decide to stack your shelves. I set these aside in case I wanted to ever use the units separately in the future. Truth be told, I will probably lose the adjustable feet by the time I ever re-realize that the shelves come back apart in two pieces and can be used separately. 

DIY BELL Brand Bicycle Headlight and Taillight-Assembly, Installation, a...

This taillight and headlight installation was fairly straightforward, however, there were a couple of things that got me momentarily hung up. The very first one was how to to get the batteries in the headlamp. Well there is a button underneath the light right at the point where the strap meets the light casing itself. Press this button and the clear portion of the headlight will detach from the black body. This will allow you to install your three AA batteries. The headlight has three light functions. A dimmer beam, brighter beam, and a strobe blinking function. It's a very nice light and provides an illuminated road or trail in front of you during non-daylight riding opportunities. Very happy with the lighting it provides.

The taillight battery installation is a piece of cake. The casing between the red plastic portion comes apart from the black plastic body portion with relative ease in a prying motion. It does take two hands. This is good b/c you don't want it coming apart on you out on the road. The only hang up with installing this was that if you decide to place it anywhere else besides on you seat post, it's bulkiness can be a little cumbersome as far as ease of fit goes. I decided to place this just below the seat post in the back on the frame portion of the bike. This light has two functions, blinking function and a solid red light. Works well. Here's a super cheap kit just like it.



For the price of these two lights (as a kit) it wasn't a bad buy. There are better and lighter lights out there for bikes, but for the price, ease of installation, and standard AA battery usage, these work very well for non-professional bike riders such as myself.