Oh, IKEA, How I Love You!

Roughly once a year, a bunch of my crazy friends will join me in a road trip to our closest IKEA. It’s near Chicago, so it’s a five hour drive for us – ONE WAY.

At 7am, we pile into someone’s minivan and hit the road. We talk about anything and everything for five hours, flip through IKEA catalogs and plan our shopping lists, then arrive at IKEA around noon. We browse the showroom for about two hours (initiating any IKEA virgins in our group), then stop for lunch at the cafeteria located inside the store. After lunch, we backtrack to the kids’ furnishing/bedding/toy section before heading downstairs and piling our carts full of Swedish treasures. Usually we load the car and finish up by 6:00. We stop on the road somewhere for dinner, and arrive home around midnight.

It’s like Disney World for women!

This year marks the fifth time I’ve done this crazy trip. My friend Beth (the mom of four boys – two of them being the set of twins that arrived in August) wanted to celebrate her birthday by getting out of the house and taking a trip to IKEA. She invited me, her neighbor and another friend to road trip. I gladly agreed and emptied my minivan in preparation for the trip. It’s a good thing it was emptied, because we needed EVERY spare inch of room. My only regret from the trip is that I didn’t take a photo of the loaded-down minivan before it was unloaded. (Well, THAT and another small regret – misplacing bed pedestals that were the deal of the century.)

One of us bought an entire dining room set: table, chairs, benches, curtains, mirrors, centerpiece, etc. Three of us bought secretaries (those desks that close up and hide your workspace).

I bought lots of odds and ends like this:

And this:

And this:

One of us (I won’t name names!) spent so much money that her credit card company called to make sure her card hadn’t been stolen.

During yesterday’s snow day, I moved the clothes sorter I bought for Jackson’s room into his closet.

I made drawer dividers from foam core and labeled the drawers using yarn and laminate sample chips that I found at Leftovers.

I also cleared a space for my new secretary desk to fit in the kids’ craft room. Last night, my wonderful husband assembled the parts and I am blogging for the first time from my new desk. Next on my list is finding time to organize everything inside the desk.

Hooray for IKEA! Now if they would only open one in the St. Louis area. Pretty please?!