Ya’ll, Charles and I made our first trip to Ikea in over 5 years… And we were so damn efficient with our time (in and out of Ikea in ONE hour) that we blew our own damn minds haha.
I think it helps that we both dislike shopping in malls or big shopping areas that are crowded with people. It’s a little overwhelming and makes shopping an exhausting process. As a result, we mostly only go shopping for clothes or home goods when we know exactly what we want. And if we have to go the mall, we go in, get what we need and then we’re out asap. No leisurely browsing.
Well actually… Charles is a little more susceptible to “leisurely shopping”. He’s more into clothes than I am – I swear I spend more time in the men’s section of a store than the women’s when we shop together lol.
But for moments when he’s taking his time in the shopping process, I have no problem letting him know when my shopping limit is up and it always sounds a little something like this:
“Ok babe. I’m bout done breathing in all this recirculated indoor air. Let’s go”
or
“10 minutes. If you don’t find something in 10 minutes, I’m out and I’m leaving your a$$”
or sometimes before we even leave the truck to go into the mall, I let him know:
” It’s 2pm right now which means we need to be out by 3:30pm at the latest. If we’re in the mall for longer than that, you’re getting me some ice cream. And I’m not sharing.”
So obviously leading up to our trip to Ikea, you know I did as much prep work as possible to help us get in and out of Ikea as quickly as possible.
These were the 5 main things we did that I think made the difference in saving us time at Ikea:
1) We gave ourselves a budget, browsed online and identified the items we wanted to get that fit within said budget. We checked to see if the items were in stock at our nearest Ikea location, made a list and wrote the product codes before heading out the door.
2) We got to Ikea 10 minutes before it opened on a Saturday morning to avoid the crowds.
3) We skipped the showroom and went directly to warehouse area to find the items we wanted.
4) We went straight to the self-serve computers, typed in the product codes and located what aisles our items were in.
5) We didn’t go to the “As-Is” room. You know that room near the cash registers where everything is super discounted with the premise that you take the items as-is (sometimes beat up, sometimes not). As tempting as it was because we love us a good, cheap find, Charles and I knew what we wanted, were within budget and didn’t need to go anywhere near that room. So we didn’t.
^^ In search of the area rug we wanted.
When it comes to how we worked together on this Ikea shopping trip.
Charles was responsible for doing all the heavy lifting.
While at home…
^^ I did all the building haha.
In the 9 years that we’ve been together, I’ve learned that Charles doesn’t really like to read instructions – he prefers to dive into a project with the belief that he “knows” what he’s doing… I can’t tell you the amount of times he’s started a project that I’ve had to finish because the man didn’t read the instructions.
So over time, the building of things has fallen on my lap which I’m ok with. I actually enjoy putting things together, it’s like a puzzle and I love puzzles.
So what did we get from Ikea, you may wonder?
1) We got this 7×9 area rug. The photo above is the before.
^^ And after. Crazy what a difference the rug makes!
2) These red stackable chairs. They add a pop of color and also provide additional seats for when we have guests. Also, love that they ‘re stackable to store away afterwards.
3) This hallway bench to store our shoes since we always take them off first thing upon entering our apartment. As you can see in the photo above, it’s also being used as a dump all place for other things at the moment haha.
4) Not pictured… We also got this full length mirror for our bedroom and this gray storage shelf to provide more storage.
So far we’ve been focusing on getting our common living spaces together. Once that’s done, we’ll focus on getting the bedroom together.
And that’s that. Our trip to Ikea and haul in a nutshell.
What are some ways you save time when shopping at Ikea?
P.S. In case anyone’s interested, I created a “Black And Yellow Home” pinterest board a couple weeks ago to keep all my home decor related inspiration in one place. I’ve pinned the items we have in our apartment as well as things that are on our wish list. Feel free to check it out here :)
P.P.S. You can read more of our “Black And Yellow Home” related posts here.
