IKEA, just the sound of it makes my heart flutter and want to bounce off every corner of the room. If you’re anything like me, IKEA has played an important role in fueling your desire to just get off Netflix and rearrange your whole bedroom. Just walking through its wonderful rotating doors has the effect of turning me from a broke college student to an interior designer, already meticulously planning where to place each innovative and chic piece of furniture that catches my eye.
I confidently confess that I know what each floor contains, from the IKEA restaurant on the top floor to their AS-IS on the lowest.
Each room has more than once left me breathless, with their ability to capture the sense of ‘home’ and their attention to detail. My brother and I would always make it a point of lounging in each room, pretending as though we lived there. Closets with endless amount of storage space, beds with fun patterns that just made you want to flop on them, island kitchen tables with an oak countertop, each and every one of these gems only fueled our excitement for what was in store in the next room.
It has led me to believe that the perfect date with my SO would be touring each and every floor the store had to offer, and finding pieces we would incorporate into our imaginary apartment.
It has made me spend more hours looking through their yearly catalog than the hours I put into studying.
I mean, how could you not want to spend hours flipping through their 2016 catalog with such an inviting cover like that?
It has more than once inspired me to want to design my own furniture and start planning what I wanted my first apartment to look like, even though my college tuition won’t allow that for the time being.
Overall, IKEA has become somewhat of a second home for me, filling me up with a sense of security and warmth my own home provides. It has opened the doors (haha) to other wonderful furniture retailers as well, such as Crate & Barrel and Pier 1 Imports. However despite all that, IKEA will always be my #1.