Three banners flanked the front of the building. They snapped in the breeze with the amicable attitude of an embassy or neutral zone, electric blue and rubber-duck yellow walls signifying peace. The parking lot was big enough that there were advertisement signs over the cart returns, as if a discount on dull white bedsheets could be enough to sway a reluctant shopper’s freewill. I had finally reached this near mythical destination after years and years of pointing it out on the highway and shouting its name like cows spotted on a road trip.
IKEA.
It’s like Time Square. Everyone must go, at least once, just to experience it. There are Tik-Tok skits on it and entire households filled with IKEA pieces like the do-it-yourself furniture is the secret sauce to a happy home.
We headed inside, a pep in our step like we were children headed to see our favorite fossils at the museum. Despite the massive, labyrinth type structure, it was easy to follow with white arrows on the floor. If you stay on the path like Gandalf said, you’ll get through just fine.
I shop for home decor as a pastime, whether it’s thrift, vintage, or overstuffed shelves at T. J. Maxx. I like strolling through aisles of pillows like I’m smelling the flowers, stroking each one to see if it has the right, satisfying texture I’m searching for. I like digging through rows and rows of picture frames like I’m searching through old archives, looking for an elusive round frame or a vintage owl print.
IKEA was supposed to be a maze that sent me into an existential crisis, the ultimate home decor shopping spot. I was supposed to emerge a different person having traversed through Wonderland. There’s no place like it on earth.
Instead I left with only a box of cinnamon rolls to eat back at the hotel room. I received no revelation from the endless displays of dishware, duvets, or desks. Too many options. Too many stacks. Too much stuff.
Always too much stuff.
I like stuff. Like books or little mushrooms to put above the door and tiny cats to put on my windowsill. But there’s stuff and then there’s stuff. There’s stuff in cupboards and then there are cupboards that are stuffed.
When I clean out my closet I sometimes wonder what’s the point if I throw away the unneeded clothes in the trash. The clothes still exist. They just don’t exist in my closet anymore. I hesitate each time I throw away recyclable and unrecyclable food containers. Somehow it feels awful to feed myself from the earth and then give the earth trash back in exchange.
So I compost, veggies scraps to feed the bugs and pumpkins to feed the deer. So I buy everything I can secondhand and use the toothpaste till I’ve squeezed and scraped out every last bit of minty blue.
In the IKEA bedrooms I stood staring at stuff. Generic clothes on hangers I didn’t need in a free standing closet I didn’t need either. I stood in IKEA living rooms picking up cute vases that I knew I’d find one day at Goodwill. I stood in the IKEA kitchens with salt and pepper shakers I could buy secondhand and enough plates to not wash dishes for a month.
“We don’t need anything,” my mother said. At some point you reach maximum capacity in the kitchen and living room and bedroom. At some point you realize no gadget will actually make your life easier, it’s just more stuff to clean.
I almost bought a plush animal, if only because I felt like I would be rescuing it from its sterile prison, as it looked at me with pleading, plastic eyes. Like the plush animal was a victim of excess and commercialism. It didn’t ask to be created and left in a white wire bin.
I saw a cute couch I liked, one I liked better than the one I have. But why would I buy a new one and give the earth a couch that it doesn’t want either?
We came down that last colossal aisle where the furniture is stacked all the way to the ceiling in boxes held by giant wire shelves. It was all just stuff, stuff no different from all the other stores and all the other shelves, more stuff than anyone needs.
I left unfulfilled, a little blank like the concrete gray floor and the mostly empty checkout counters. The stuff didn’t have anything to give me. Maybe that’s why I bought the cinnamon rolls at the end of it all.
I didn’t keep track of how many cinnamon rolls I ate that night. They were sticky and sweet and tasted ever so slightly wrong, like everything ever trapped too long in a plastic box. My mom and I had that existentialist crisis in the hotel room at midnight, but it wasn’t about stuff.
