Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

5 stages of putting together IKEA furniture

I have spent the better part of the summer putting together IKEA furniture and the process is the same no matter what. It’s long and painful and never really gets any easier the more you do it.  It’s almost like the Five Stages of Grief, but with more crying and throwing things.

Putting together IKEA furniture sucks! Five stages everyone goes through when they're putting together IKEA furniture | Gardening In High Heels

Excitement

Yeah, alright, I have new furniture! I’ll refresh my look and it’ll be so affordable. I may even do one of those Apartment Therapy IKEA hacks. And I got this fun organizer, and these plates, and a funky Euro print, too, and it was all in one place. One-stop home furnishings shopping. I love this place and I’m never leaving. I’m so urban and hip, I can’t stand myself.

Disbelief

Wait a minute, that cost how much?? But I just got some dog-butt hooks and a night stand! Also how do these Swedish people transport this stuff? Are they ridiculously strong and carry it home on their backs? Because this defintely isn’t fitting in my car and aren’t European cars even smaller?

Frustration

Why do I have 50 little screws and only 10 holes? Do I have to make my own? Am I being punked? This can’t be right, can it??

And what’s this diagram showing me? Not to climb on the bookshelf? No kidding! How about I also don’t take my new desk lamp into the bath with me.

I give up. I’m going to lay here like Sadness until Joy drags my away by my foot because I am done and this is stupid and I’m stupid because I can’t figure out why this little line drawing looks so happy and I just want to jump into a bath with my desk lamp plugged in.

Acceptance

Fine. I’ll keep building because it’s better than figuring out how to get it back to the store half-built. Also, I don’t want to go to the 7th circle of hell ever again. So I’ll just stay right here. Pouting.

Begrudging Relief

It is done. Someone get me a coffee the size of my head and follow it up with a stiff drink. I need to forget that experience ever happened. I am never doing that again. Oooh mail’s here, look at the new catalog! I want this..and this..

—

I swear, if you want to get married to someone, put together IKEA furniture first. If you successfully build it will all the parts and don’t want to rip each others’ head off, congrats. You should get married. You could also probably raise kids together as well or at least care for a very large dog.

I think I’m going to lay off the IKEA furniture for a while.

What’s your IKEA experience been like recently? Any fun stories?

Home

Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is Where Do You Call Home.  Man that is a loaded question.

Home to me is where the kitchen is. It's the warmest place in the house!

Since I was about 10 or 11, I lived in two different places.  Half of my life was spent at my mom’s house, the other half was spent at my dad’s house.  I still have clothes and shoes spread out between the different locations, even though I’m living in my own house (which is actually my mom’s house that I’m renting from her while she is living in Virginia).

I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of “home” recently.  If you go back to posts in March, you’d see that I spent a lot of time whining that I had to pack up my father’s house while he was in the hospital.  It’s one thing to move away from your first home, but it’s another entirely to pack it up and sell it.  Two different mindsets, I guess.  You can always go back if you move away.  When you sell it…well, you can’t go back to those memories.

It’s ironic that I’m writing this because I just found out that my father is putting his house on the market.  It’s happening for sure whereas back in March it was a suggestion from his sisters.  It’s definitely bittersweet.  He and I acknowledged that I can’t live there and take care of him forever and that I’ve worked hard to afford what I can and get where I am.

And it’s sad to think that last year, we unwittingly had our last Christmas there.  And Easter.  And birthdays.

But now, home is where my kitchen is.  Like I wrote a few weeks ago, my mom’s kitchen is one of my favorite places.  I love to cook and bake.  I definitely got that from both of my grandmas, but my mom had a biiiig role in that, too.

She taught me a great deal in her kitchen.  I tried to make her kitchen my own, but some things still remain, the her Pfaltzgraff rejects (she got new ones so I got the hand-me-downs.  Not complaining!)  Nice little touches of home.

Pfaltzgraff utensil holder

Franktuary poster

So while home is in transition right now, I’ll still have things that remind me of my dad’s house, like the bookcases he built that were in the living room the whole time I was growing up (I already said I’m taking those, no exceptions) and the beautiful Barry Jeter pieces he bought for me.

Where is home for you?

An InLinkz Link-up


Let’s Play

           

People Really Dug These

We Belong in the Garden Together