The one weird trick I learned from IKEA 😂
Tears of joy. That’s what dripped from my eyes one late Saturday afternoon about four years ago.
Ms. H and I had deliberated for weeks about how to better maximize the space in our laundry area. We landed on shelves, then a shelving unit, then, a nightmarish scenario, a shelving unit from IKEA.
“I can go,” I told her.
“No. No. I’ll go with you,” she said.
Her decision reflected an epic change in mindset. In 2008 we renovated our basement and living room and purchased 4 figures (US dollars) worth of lighting and cabinets. The familiar smell of particle board paneling, cardboard, and cinnamon rolls filled my nostrils as I, and sometimes Ms. H, motored between our house and IKEA over several days to buy all the different components.
“I’m never going back there,” she had declared when that home reno project was completed.
Maybe she wanted to seem more reasonable ten years later when we decided to buy an IKEA cabinet for the laundry room or maybe she just felt sorry for me. Either way, we picked out two Expedit cabinets with drawers and crates from the online site, and she was ready to give the Swedish Box of Death (SBOD)™️ another go.
I started to get anxious, in part because I knew how much she hated the SBOD™️, and that made her anxious, which made me anxious, and so on.
“Why don’t we break it up,” I finally said.
“Break it up?”
“Yeah, like we go to IKEA after work on Thursday and buy the shelves, then set aside the whole day on Saturday to put everything together.”
Our 2008 remodeling extravaganza had left no time between picking up everything at IKEA, ferrying everything home, carrying everything into the house, and removing all the slats and sides and screws from the box to begin assembly. A few times I’m sure I refused the bathroom just to get started. I’m also sure Ms. H. and I fought more than once as a result of the stress.
“That’s a really good idea. Let’s break it up.” Ms. H. declared.
So that’s what we did. Thursday we purchased everything at IKEA and probably got dinner at Neehee’s, metro Detroit’s best Indian street food restaurant.
Friday we prepared the area for the new cabinets.
Saturday we woke up, drank coffee, and got started. Around 12:30 we broke for a French lunch, which meant a heaping protein, bread (naturally), salad, and white wine for Ms. H.
We wrapped up mid-afternoon, proud of our accomplishment (because, really, putting together an IKEA cabinet can require the visual reading skills of an architect and the patience of many saints) but more in awe of how relaxed we had been through the whole process.
Then I realized the importance of taking as much time as necessary to complete a project with many tasks. I tend to push onerous projects into as little time as possible. But that always backfires, at least in my experience. In a different time, we would have purchased everything Saturday morning, prepared the space early Saturday afternoon, constructed everything into the late evening hours, and fought at least 14 times.
But instead we took our time and kind of wandered through the whole thing with an easy we’ve-got-the-whole-weekend to do this kind of attitude.
It is a kind of weird trick, expanding the time boundaries of a hated project so as to seem almost ridiculous. Haters could criticize us for taking two days to complete the project. But IKEA taught me the weird trick of expanding time to let the stress of hated projects dissipate until there’s only quiet and togetherness and a sense of accomplishment that remains.
Until next time, Jay