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I had never been shopping at the Portland IKEA until last night, when I trekked to Cascade Station and spent three hours under IKEA’s practical, reasonably priced lighting. And now I feel like a failure. Here is why:

1. When you get off the MAX train, you will crave a smoothie and head to Jamba Juice. There is a line. The perky Jamba Team Member will shout “Jamba!” after each purchase. You will back out of the Jamba Juice, failing to cope with a world where people are forced to smile and shout, “Jamba!”

2. Having forgone Jamba Juice, you will go to Yo Cream because it seems really popular and what the hell is Yo Cream? Inside, you will realize that Yo Cream is “eco friendly” frozen yogurt, complete with prominently labeled eco-containers and eco-spoons. You will feel like a failure for paying $5 for 12.5 ounces of environmentally friendly frozen yogurt.

3. Once you ascend the central escalator of IKEA, you will realize you are shopping at IKEA and this makes you middle class and boring and means you will fill your house with belongings, rid your house of belongings, fill it again and, someday, die. The colors of the complimentary Bright Yellow Bags do little to ward off this descending feeling of doom.

4. Following the path to the kitchen section, you realize that no matter how many Bekvams, Flyttas and Grolands you buy, your kitchen will never look like the IKEA catalog kitchen because, despite having the full rights of an adult citizen, you cannot figure out how to store possessions in any other manner than giant fucking piles on every counter and besides, your refrigerator contains exclusively beer and condiments and rotten fruit, anyway, because you are a failure.

5. Having decided you will never purchase a Bekvam or Flytta or Groland because you should never own anything you can’t pack into a suitcase because now that the walls of your life are closing in, you have to make it count and flee all commitment as quickly as possible, you will realize that you can’t afford a Flytta and you should probably just go home to your poorly-decorated house like a failure.

Then you will discover that IKEA sells prawn cheese spread in a tube and your life will seem brighter.

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Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

27 replies on “Going to IKEA Will Make You Feel like a Failure”

  2. Prawn cheese spread—or räkost—is one of my favorite Swedish food novelties. Walk into any Swedish supermarket, in fact, and you’ll find an entire aisle full of things in tubes. Bacon cheese, pesto cheese, cheese cheese. Then there’s the caviar in tubes, made to be squirted out in zigzags atop your open-face breakfast sandwich. And garlic-flavored mayonnaise tubes with little star openings that make your mayo squirts into lithesome florets. The tube-foods of Sweden are delightful, and they’re begging for a squeeze. Varsågod!

  4. IKEA certinaly takes some patience. We visited three times, over 12 months, before we could actually bring ourselves to buy anything. We felt the same awful “I really hope I don’t belong here” pangs. The way the store is laid out doesn’t do it any favors – walking through on the forced path reminds one of the conveyor line at an abattoir.

    Now, however, we’ve got a a nice faux-Persian rug for the living room that was only $60 or something like that.

    It really ties the room together.

    JOIN US IN MEDIOCRITY.

  6. Learning the shortcuts through the maze helps. Also the giant fan with the 10 foot blades in the furniture self-serve area makes me wish I had some of that fizzy soda from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

  12. You can:

    a) Build furniture out of egg crates and salvaged boards your whole life;
    b) Hunt around 2nd-hand stores for a collection of passable, but completely mis-matched used furniture that looks like its from the 2nd-hand store;
    c) Go to a real furniture store and spend $400 for an end table;
    d) See what “designer” items they have at Fred Meyer; or
    e) Go to IKEA.

    It’s a necessary evil.

  14. SM,
    You are not a failure- capitalism has failed you!

    I must say, I truly enjoy the irony of the step by step directions you wrote this in:
    Reminds me of that computer desk I bought, took 3 weeks to assemble, lasted 1 year, and then no one would take for free on Craig’s list. Lesson-should have thrown in free prawn cheese spread to sweeten the deal///or when someone called I’d simply answer the phone saying “JAMBA”.

  16. My friend Dave went into the Peace Corps in the late 90’s to Tanzania. He came back with was the ability to speak Swahili decently. With this newfound knowledge, he clued me into the fact the “Jamba” in Swahili means “fart”. He got into an email argument with the aforementioned Juice company over the word about 10 years ago. Seems he wasn’t alone:

    http://tinyurl.com/jambajamba

    Fart Juice, now you know.

  17. It is a nice place for old folks to walk a few miles when it is raining. There is even a place in the middle of maze to sit down and drink coffee. If you need anything from IKEA it will be cheaper and assembled on Craigslist or on the curb near apartments the last week of the month.

  19. For a Portland alternative, try City Liquidators. They’ve been under the Morrison bridge for 32 years, family owned. If you haven’t been there it’s ridiculous – just a huge rambling series of warehouses of furniture. It goes on forever – the rooms just get dustier and less visited until you run out of food. Great prices, too!

  20. OMG, just look at this team photo from City Liquidators! http://www.cityliquidators.com/about.php

    They all look like nice people, but Grandpa sure looks befuddled in that picture. And who invited the Secretary of State? How does the blonde fox fit with the rest of this crew? Was that guy in the Goonies? And why does the little rebel daughter look like the JUST got done making out?

    Also, I bet that guy has at least one pair of Oakleys.

  24. My fiance now has his black-belt in IKEA after assembling an entire kitchen cabinet set for a friend and a loft bed for his daughter. It is a necessary evil sometimes, but I do love the meatballs!

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