After Craigslist, Etsy, eBay, Apartment Deco and random vintage websites didn’t bear fruit I turned, as usual, to the IKEA website. I just needed a few more seating options to take advantage of my newly relevant yard. The misery for me, though, was peppered with moments of ecstasy in the backyard away from the Ingrates (as I’d named the others), where I marvelled at the variegated greens unfurling into the clear – clear – air. My family of four were stuck together in our Brooklyn row house listening to non-stop sirens. Mine was shattered during lockdown in spring 2020. When any denial loses its cover, it’s painful. I had such a sense of control over the calmly evolving inventory that I was in denial about how much I relied on the store to keep my daily life going. I don’t need to spend $200 per cushion for the deck, and these are actually fine.”Įven as we have scorned the place, we’ve all prided ourselves on knowing how and when to use it. “Jane! Your deck looks amazing! Where’d you get your patio cushions?!” Eyeroll. (The shoe racks I found at furniture e-tailers were ugly and depressing, but Mackapär is cheerful and pretty.)ĭespite IKEA’s relative virtue, my friends and I treat the store as a shameful concession, a stopgap on the way to realising our slow decorating dreams. An hour shopping for headphones at Best Buy can crush you for a week, whereas IKEA lets you build your spirit back up again with a lingonberry juice and soothing vista.Īlthough the monolithic furniture retailer is obviously in it for profit, the vaguely socialist promise behind IKEA’s “democratic design principles” (form, function, sustainability, quality and low price) typically translates into offering the nicest version of a thing that can be made affordably. What keeps mass-consumer allergics like me coming back are these little appeals to humanity. The latter’s cafeteria has a fantastic view of the Statue of Liberty, the former of the freeway, which looks quite cool framed by the oversized windows. Just as I juggle two countries, I maintain two IKEAs, the one in Etobicoke and another in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Eleven months of the year I rent the Toronto house out furnished so that, come August, I can pretend that my family and I still live there. (The cabinet- and drawer-fronts painted up beautifully in Farrow & Ball “Skylight”.) That’s why I needed Mackapär. Thirty-five years later I bought a modest brick semi-detached house in Toronto and designed my first IKEA kitchen. When I was 13 and allowed to decorate my own room, with prescience I juxtaposed cottage-core Laura Ashley wallpaper, antiques and contemporary white IKEA veneer. Though I pride myself on my auction, Craigslist and Kijiji shopping agility, IKEA has played a part in every key transition in my life. I’m coming to terms with my own pandemic hangover in the form of an existential question that haunts me like a stripped hex screw – had I mastered IKEA, or had IKEA mastered me?
The Dutch-based, Swedish-born company is dealing with a pandemic hangover: a 16% fall in profit between August 2020 and August 2021.