Ikea

This blog is my new obsession: http://chezlarsson.com/myblog/

It is a very well-written and comprehensive blog (lots of pictures but not too many, and lots of links to other cool things on days when I have already watched 6+ consecutive episodes of L&O and need a break). It also combines lots of things that I love: cool interior design, not spending too much money, and they live in Sweden! About a year and a half ago, I got really into learning Swedish. The blog is in English, but there are little Swedish glimpses all over the blog... like Swedish labels for her well-organized drawers, thick socks and gray sky through the windows, and the fact that everything looks so futuristic and clean!

One Swedish think about it that I don't like, though? Ikea. This

blog features lots of things from Ikea. Ikea is a Swedish company that offers "affordable solutions for better living." In my experience, though, it offers cheap solutions for college students and recent graduates. Whenever I think of Ikea, I think of that "Malm" dresser that is in every college student's apartment. Yeah, that one. It seems like one of those things you buy because it's simple and fades into the background of your space to mak

e cool things like posters and rope lights stand out, but actually it's like having a giant cardboard box in the corner of the room. There's not much to it, but it's huge and not very fun to look at. But you can't help looking at it. (Sorry, Corey, I know you have this dresser, but sometimes I wish you would just paint it with pink nail polish like the rest of your stuff. It doesn't look bad where it is now in the hallway of your apartment with pink clothes spewing out of the drawers, though.)

Have you ever been to Ikea? It's a serious fire hazard. You go in thinking, "Oh, I'll just go buy a Malm dresser. I bet it's really easy to find." So you walk in and enter a dangerous labyrinth of furniture and Swedish accessories and signs that you may never escape. Thanks for providing that map, Ikea. That looks super helpful. I'll just walk in and go up the escalator and go straight and then left and then left and then right and then left and -- oh look at that cool circular shelf that can't possibly serve any functional purpose... wait, what the hell is a "bin number"? -- and then right and then left.... and that's only to get through the first third of the showroom. What if there were a fire or you realized you left your kid in the car when looking at that circular shelf? How would you get out? Because in your panicked state, you definitely couldn't just glance at the map and navigate back the way you came. And even if you could, that escalator only goes up, it doesn't go down.

But I digress. The Larssons actually do a quite impressive job of integrating Ikea pieces into their Swedish home without coming across like a college dorm room. I think it might be because they are actually Swedish. On the other hand, the only Swedish people I actually know don't even like Ikea. The Larssons do a lot of their home projects and renovations themselves, and most of the projects come out looking both presentable and maybe even manageable projects to attempt myself, one day.