Needy Single Women Who Buy Ikea Furniture

I'm not ashamed to admit that this describes me to a T.

Photo by Christopher Jolly on Unsplash

I can travel SOLO to anywhere in the world but put me in a room with Ikea boxes and a set of instructions and I'll still be sitting there in the year 2042.

Yesterday I posted this note and 100% of those who engaged with it shared a deep understanding.

If you have an Ikea in your city, reading the following should feel like looking in the mirror. 😁

Everybody knows that hanging out inside an Ikea store is hands down, the best way to kill an entire day.

Don’t ever go to Ikea if you have a to-do list because once you come across the display room where they’ve stuffed an entire functioning home into 322 square feet, you’ll never get out of the store. It’s mesmerizing.

I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea.

First of all, there’s only one store in my city and it’s clear across town. It’s a forty-minute field trip to get there but the journey is worth it knowing there will be a $2.99 smorgasbord with meatballs at the end of the labyrinth.

Two things I love most about Ikea are affordability and uniqueness. I can buy an 8-drawer dresser in whatever color I want, packaged neatly into a box the size of a teacup. Try finding that in a normal furniture store.

Okay, the teacup is an exaggeration but the dresser I bought was only four inches wide inside the box and it is now a five-foot piece of furniture.

Mind-boggling.

Now on to the needy single women.

The thing about Ikea is that unless you just go there to buy a lightbulb, you can’t build their furniture alone. There are way too many sticks, pegs and shiny things.

Of course, it’s no problem doing the shopping alone. I was able to single-handedly slide the four-inch box into the back of my vehicle with ease. I was even able to get the box up to my fourth-floor condo with relative ease (the son-of-a-bitch was heavy).

But then, there I was with a five-foot-tall box leaning up against my kitchen island, obstructing my view of the TV. It was the longest, most boring two days of meal prepping I’ve ever endured.

I knew I wasn’t going to tackle assembling it on my own. The last time I bought something at Ikea, it took my mother and me a full eight hours to build a bed frame. I don’t have that kind of time to invest in a single task.

So I put up a post on Facebook that read:

“I’m looking for two men to come and build my Ikea dresser. I have rum, vodka, Baileys, and $50 for anyone who might be available in the next few days.”

I figured I’d be swarmed with volunteers based on the alcohol alone but no takers chimed in. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why no one wanted in on the unveiling of 457 screws, pegs, nails, and Allen wrenches.

Finally, I received a message from a young lady-friend of mine who was volunteering her husband to do it. She’s like the daughter I never asked for but got stuck with anyway (her exact words), and she dated my late son for a minute, thirteen years ago.

She had asked her husband, “Do you think it’s weird if we go help Kristi build her Ikea dresser?”

He replied, “What’s weird is that people still buy shit they don’t need real tools to build.”

Spoken like a true handyman who would rather use a drill.

He agreed to help the needy single lady and refused any notion of monetary payment. He would do it for the rum.

The two of them came over and James, her husband, ripped open the Ikea box like it was his job. He instructed us both to sit on the couch and stay out of his way. We would be a bigger help if we just left him the hell alone.

This was the best deal of my life. I thought I could at least hold up a board or screw in a knob.

Occasionally, I’d glance over to check the progress and all I saw were a bunch of scattered sticks, but I had faith. No man volunteers to put together Ikea furniture for free, unless he knows how to read Swedish, even though he’s Dutch.

Within 2.5 hours, James had single-handedly built my entire dresser while we women spent the time gossiping about old times, parenting, and shameful behavior in New Orleans.

Aside from one drink of rum, there was nothing else I could do but thank him profusely. I have no gifts or talents to return favors with except website building, so I offered him a website.

I’m not sure if he’ll ever take me up on it.

I struggled briefly to figure out if this story fits into the “finding your Wildhood” category and nope….it does not. Wildhood would have been strapping this dresser onto my back and carrying it out to a cabin in the woods.

But I guarantee it’ll spark some great conversation in the comments below 😁

What’s your most (or least) favorite Ikea experience?