Friday, September 24, 2010

A little Saturday road trip.

Before moving last fall, our family owned a duplex in the Milwaukee suburbs. Of which, the space we lived in occupied a mere 784 square feet. It was a beautiful house, full of 100-year-old wood work and charm, but we'd had enough of the Tetris-storage game.

When we bought our new, 2200 square foot current home, I joked that we would be living like hobos. We didn't own enough furniture to even come close to filling it. The first six weeks we lived here we had a TV on the wall of the family room and only the floor to sit on. We had only recently acquired our new king-sized bedroom set, or the guest room would have been empty, too.

We're still acquiring "stuff", like any family does, though we probably have more empty spaces than most people would allow. I, on the other hand, don't really care. Its nice to have room to breathe and the rooms will look lived in soon enough. But it occurred to me awhile ago that I might just want to make some effort at adorning my home before it gets overrun with bean bag chairs and deer mounts.

So when I tweeted

I had a grand idea. What could a family do together that would be adventurous and fun and might address my "too-little-furniture" problem?

Why, drive to IKEA of course!

There's not a store within 100 miles, the nearest being in Schaumburg, IL. It was perfect for a Saturday road trip, to be followed up with a stop at the Lego Store in the Woodfield Mall as a treat to the boys for being good in the Mommy store.

I'd never been there before, and though I'd been warned...I just had no idea. That place is freakin' HUGE. As in three stories of inexpensive home furnishings including escalators for your cart huge.

And on Saturdays? Oh my dear Lord in heaven save my sanity. That place is BUSY.

We had a short list of items we wanted to look for. (Actually, very short. We meant to measure the boys' closets before we left so as to buy some sort of organizer thingie, but we forgot.) In case you've never been, (riiiight - I'm probably the last person on the face of the planet to have never been inside an Ikea) you don't actually have to need anything. They have crap upon crap that's just right for, well, anyone who cares to go looking for it.

I put it together myself, yos.
And I swear mine looks
exactly like this.

I'll have to go back sometime when I'm more prepared, and more in the mindset to actually do some hard core purchasing. But I got some much needed oranization for my office and that counter in the kitchen that seems to be a magnet for papers and stuff. We got a step stool for the bathroom and a night stand and bedside lamp for the guest room. We found this wire thing that has clips on it - I can't find it on their site for the freakin' life of me - but you essentially hang it on the wall and clip kids' artwork to it, thus eliminating the chaos that can easily become the front of the refrigerator when you have young school-aged children.

Long story short, we survived Saturday IKEA hell and made it to the Lego Store just slightly before the time that my children would have begun to melt down from being overshopped and underfed.

They each (Hubster included) got to make their own Lego person, and took turns gazing into the displays of stuff made out of Legos. I was utterly surprised that they both didn't beg and plead to buy more, but we did decide on going to Red Robin for burgers, so that's probably what saved us. Next time, we'll have to plan better and take them to the Legoland Discovery Centre.

They'd be like, well, kids in a Legoland Discovery Centre.

Lego Land