Land of the Swedish Furniture

It's 11:43, I'm totally fried, and I'm just sitting down now to do all of today's writing.

Why?

Because I spent the day with Savageman roaming through the Baltimore IKEA store.


And when I say "the day," I mean the whole day.

Don't get me wrong, Savageman's a hoot. We have a great time together, especially on the rare occasion we can get away without the kids.

But furniture shopping together? Not our favorite thing.

So really, I should be happy that he went at all. And he was excellent company. We had a nice drive to and from, we had a lovely lunch together in the cafe, and we did all kinds of goofy things together with all the amazing props we had at our disposal in the store.

But making decisions on things - especially things we will have to live with for a long time - it's not easy.

Part of the reason why it's not easy is the same reason we're such a good team. We approach these situations from completely different angles.

I would prefer to walk into the place, look around, pick something, pay for it and leave. In like, 5 minutes. If I got it home and it wasn't quite right, I'd simply adjust.

He needs to think about everything, examine every possibility, look through the catalog, talk to the salesperson, look at all the options again, sit down and think it over... you get the idea.

As a result, there have been many times that he has talked me out of a purchase that I thought would be perfect - and he was right.   Other times, we wind up with exactly the thing I picked out in 5 minutes, but after taking 6 weeks for him to decide. 

We only had one day, so we managed to balance each other out - my desire to be quick and efficient and not overthink things, and his desire to ponder more thoroughly - and in the end, we were able to be (relatively) patient with each other and we bought more furniture than we could fit in the minivan, even with the seats down.

 

It's being delivered Thursday.

A whole wall of shelving for our books and CDs, a loveseat and chair, a buffet for the dining room, and a bunch of accessories - our main floor will be just about done, with plenty of storage to (hopefully) keep it clean and uncluttered. 

But first, I have to put it all together...