“There’s so much, and it’s all so very beautiful… It’s so tragic… [sniffle, hiccup] We can’t have it all. How will we ever choose?”
“There, there… it will be okay. Are you at Ikea again?”
Every trip to Ikea is an emotional journey for me. It’s
been this way from the very beginning of our relationship, Ikea and me. I used
to go on these horrible and excessive benders—binging on purchases, hundreds of
dollars worth, only to purge it all in the returns department in the days that
followed when my sanity had returned and my guilt had all but consumed me.
Recovery has been a rocky road.
Itty bitty baby steps of self-discipline.
Phase 1: Lusting after the
designer rooms and innovative organizational storage from the catalogue and safety
of my own living room.
Phase 2: Spending a
pre-determined amount of time wandering the upstairs showrooms, using my phone’s
camera to capture all my favorite things, creating a little personal pinterest
that I could look at whenever the next urge struck.
Phase 3: Bringing the
children. That one was probably the most effective, since they suck the
intimacy right out of most situations with the constant jabbering,
question-asking, and whining. Most effective, but NOT the most fun.
Phase 4: Sticking to the
list. This is the phase I’m currently in, and things have been pretty
stable. There’s only one thing that can thwart it:
The art section.
How can I adequately describe my romance with the art
section of Ikea? My heart rate increases just thinking about it.
A love-hate tide swells inside me the instant I arrive
and evaluate my surroundings, and the excessive-compulsive
battle begins. There’s so much, and it’s all so very beautiful. There are the
enormous wall-covering canvases and the post-card-sized five-packs of quirky
images and the many medium-sized things in between. And the frames! And the lovely
relatively new addition of wall decals!
I used to employ a special recovery technique to resist
the wiles of that seductive art section.
Bonus Phase: Conjuring great
disdain for the travesty of commercially mass-produced artwork. Probably
EVERYBODY has this poster/canvas/adorable sculpture now, so it’s not like it’s
unique anyway. Why would you want to be like everyone else? Why would you want
your living room to look like everyone else’s?
Alas, I couldn’t really sustain that one, no matter how
hard I tried. It’s one of the few times that I haven’t been able to
successfully lie to myself.
So tragic.
So very, very tragic.
Choosing is incredibly difficult, but I know I must use
self-discipline. I limit myself to just one thing.
I usually end up getting at least three.
That’s just the way it is with Ikea art.
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