Like I said, I recently relocated to the US. And like any other married couple, we moved into a new apartment. A nice one bedroom apartment, located in the heart of downtown Seattle, per my request, so that I can at least see human beings around and not feel too secluded in a new country. 

Now, new apartment basically by default means that you need to do it up from scratch. So there’s a lot of planning and shopping to do, furniture shopping being by far the most critical task on the list. For most people of my age group, when you hear the words “furniture shopping”, there is a default setting that takes you to the most obvious answer — IKEA!

Surprisingly, even though I’ve travelled outside India often before, I had never really been to Ikea before I moved here. And after hearing everyone tell me it’s so great and it’s so fun, I was genuinely excited to go there for the very first time! The stores are usually massive and located in somewhat outskirt areas to allow for the space they need to set up. And so we drove out to Ikea with a mental list of items in place. Typically in the US, apartments aren’t very logically laid-out in terms of floor plans (!), so you need to really think about how the look and feel you want to give your place and buy furniture accordingly, and smartly. But it gives way to lots of great and creative ideas!

Okay, now for those of you who are not too familiar with the whole USP of stores like Ikea and Walmart for furniture — they’re good quality, decently priced pieces of furniture that you can buy when you aren’t a rich person in the US. BUT…here’s the catch — you have to assemble it yourself!! Sounding good yet? 😉

Alright. Here I now introduce you to the most widely told lie by Indians who have moved here — “I know it’s a task, but building your own furniture is fun! I like it!” 

Lie. LIE!

Guys, most of you are lying! We come from India, a country where if you buy furniture, you are never expected to BUILD it, it is built for you by default and also without a charge! Living in the US is great, but every Indian misses home in these situations 😛 Labour in India is wayyy cheaper and you are not charged for every little thing, and everybody loves that, you do. Stop lying.

Anyway, in continuation, Ikea really does have great furniture and a lot of options and it’s so fun picking out things that turn an apartment into a home! You need to take out at least a few hours of your day to have a chance to look through the whole store, because there’s so much to see and choose and contemplate! Really cute and quirky stuff!

So the way it works is, every item comes with a tag that mentions the exact aisle location of where it is stored in the warehouse below. Once you choose, you go pick it up from said location, pay, load boxes into a truck you can rent for the day and take your stuff home to build it. It sounds like a lot of work, right? So, to be fair they DO have options to make it easier for you. 

Option B would be that you bill up and pay for everything you want, with an additional charge of $60 for home delivery of your furniture. Easy! But no. If you want the staff to actually pick up your items from the warehouse FOR you, please shell out $30 more! Nothing’s free in the US okay? To be fair though, this $60 and $30 covers as many items as you buy in that one time so it’s still okay. 

We bought quite a few pieces of furniture, scheduled the delivery and all was good. We actually DID build most of the furniture we bought, with some much appreciated help from friends! And honestly, it really is an experience that should be given a fair try at least once. But after discovering a faulty component in the TV table, buiding a bed that took 4 hours with a headboard that wouldn’t fit because of some fault too, we decided that we’re not the type of people who have fun building our furniture. I honestly don’t care if you call me spoilt at this point. Because let me tell you that even after paying the $60+$30 fee, we had to go BACK to the Ikea store to exchange the faulty piece that ideally they should have delivered themselves, being that it was a company error. 

But all’s well that ends well! We requested for a professional to come help assemble the remaining 2 pieces of furniture (you have to pay for that too :P) and now I love the way my apartment’s shaping up. And I have a constant inflow of new ideas of how to make it better, so its definitely fun to set up your own home for the very first time! So the point is, live and learn, I guess!

(But I still prefer the Indian way of working when it comes to these things and I have no shame in admitting this! :P) More to come soon….