Love it or Hate it...

Ikea.

I'm caught somewhere in between, now that I'm a bit of an expert (3 times and counting haha) love it in the beginning while we're gearing up to go there, love it while I'm eating my delicious Swedish meatballs with dessert to follow, love it upon first entrance while the excitement of ALL the POSSIBILITIES is still there... half an hour later, starting to feel a little less love as the maze starts to become a little trapping and the trolley's got a few more things in it than originally anticipated and we haven't even gotten out of the bedroom section yet... 2 and a half hours later hate it and wanna get out. Now. please walk faster people in front of me, and please would someone take their screaming child out of the store, and please get all this industrialised cheap materialistic crap away from me... 10 minutes from that, back to loving it as we get into the very awesomely organised you'll find this item at 'Regal 22, Fach 19' seriously. this is like heaven after the chaos of stuff you've just walked into it. Directly back to hating when get to the counter and realise this is going to A. cost a fortune, B. you have to somehow pack it all into really awful shaped canvas bags that you have to pay for (even if you take in your ones from a previous visit, cause they can't tell the difference between new ones and the ones you've brought from home) and C. when you realise you have to carry all this crap home again!

Finally back to loving when you get home and unpack everything and are feeling pretty good about your selection of not-too-Ikea looking items and useful kitchen things that everybody needs at ridiculously awesome prices.

So all in all the Ikea experience as I have learned is quite time consuming! Frustrating, satisfying and ingeniously money grabbing! We will now be limiting our Ikea trips to "we really need these 2 items and they'll be really cheap at Ikea" and will save our "we would like this, but don't really need it" for flea markets and buy-it-when-you-spy-it moments :)