Tolerating IKEA

Wandering IKEA's aisles, or really maze, never gets stale.  I can always count on at least an economical platter of gravlax and dessert.  My last two visits, a recent entry to their St. Louis store prompted by a need for a reliable restroom and to my local offering just a half hour away, did not go well.  Not even that gravlax, as they remodeled their cafeteria.  Still, getting there, followed by a lengthy walk from their parking lot to their furniture display, or even the St. L restrooms, does not deter my next visit, at least to my regional location.

Usually I have some notion of what I might want to buy.  At St. L nothing.  Mostly my local drives, which take a half hour each way through some parts of South Philadelphia shared with marine terminals, other big box stores, some gentleman's entertainment, and warehouses make me wonder how far into the future the next drive there should be.  At times I know what I want.  A mattress. A sofa. My wife accompanies me for those.  More often I go alone.  She and my daughter even stayed in the rental car as I sought out the St L facilities.  

Even when I don't have a specific item to assess, I create some imagined focus.  Shelves, kitchen ideas, closet upgrades, replace my desk chair, some kitchen or lighting tools from their lower level Marketplace.  Something to enable me to stop following the ubiquitous arrows they place on the floor.  I divert myself into a model room or an array of stuff on the floor.  I sit.  I touch with my hands.  I check the price.  For bigger things, can I get it home?  Do I really want to assemble this item in my living room with their shoddy disposable tools and language-free drawn instructions?  

Sometimes I just need to drive someplace other than my house.  A half hour seems the right distance, especially if rewarded with the Swedish version of chocolate layer cake and sodas in flavors that the WaWa does not have.

It was time for my next trip, as I looked at no merchandise while visiting their St. L store, which happened to be in convenient part of town, had readily available free parking and a restroom maintained by attendants.  At home I look at stuff when I visit IKEA, irrespective of need.  Two items:  maybe replace my desk chair, obtained from an office surplus clearance thirty years back.  IKEA has all sorts of desk chairs, price $100-500.  Not all had price tags.  Indeed, on this visit, many bins and individual items had no indication of price.  I sat on several, mostly high-backed, mostly expensive by their standards.  I liked some.  None truly superior to my current chair.  I looked casually at storage.  My Space might benefit from a new recliner.  IKEA living room furniture does not measure up to those of in-person or online furniture stores, either comfort or price.  I did not even seek these out.  As much as I like decorative things, I already have too many, having just purged some from my desk.

In their Marketplace, I look at all sorts of stuff.  I learned on Shavuot that I did not have milchig serving utensils.  Their salad sets looked shoddy.  I could use more milchig plates.  I prefer patterned of some type.  They only had solid white or light blue.  Storage I could always upgrade.  Nothing caught my attention. Gradually I have replaced the lighting in each room and outside.

IKEA creates the illusion of need, but what they really market is want.  I needed nothing, wanted almost nothing except a plate of gravlax and some cake for lunch.  This time they deprived me.

New Mattress

Sleep has not gone well for a few years.  Attempts at sleep hygiene falter.  I have improved the environment, keeping the temperature down in the summer, minimizing  distracting light, and discouraging though not eliminating those blue light emitting screens.  Since getting a big screen TV in My Space, I hardly ever watch TV in the bedroom.  Bedding needed to be changed.  I suspected that for a while, having bought a substantial mattress topper at Costco a number of years ago to salvage a sagging mattress.  It worked well for a long time but in recent  years I would again flop into bed.  My Space acquired a great recliner chair that proved more supportive and comfortable than my mattress with topper, as did every hotel mattress for a few years.

The mattress had to be replaced, so I included this among my semi-annual personal initiatives in the category of Major Purchase.  Now, not too big a purchase.  Since semi-annual goes from July through December, I started poking into furniture stores last summer.  Raymour & Flanigan, a major regional retailer, was rather helpful.  Prices seemed above what I wanted to spend and many options bumped up a box spring, which I didn't need.  At a trip to IKEA for dining chair replacement this summer, I casually looked at their mattresses.  The salespeople told me I could get mattress only, which brought the price to about what I wanted to spend.  Some brief sampling, then some higher end sampling at Boscov's.  IKEA won out.

I cannot just replace my mattress unilaterally.  My wife agreed to try out the IKEA offerings.  We settled on a firm option, a little above average in price, payed extra for delivery which saved us state sales tax and a small sum to review the old one.

It arrived on the specified date, brought in by two burly gentlemen from the Republic of Georgia with minimal English facility.  The men really struggled to get it upstairs, which surprised me since we have had bigger furniture that that placed in the bedrooms.  Eventually mission accomplished.  They took the old saggy mattress, leaving us with quite a lot of plastic and cardboard packing not included in the removal agreement to say nothing of scattered objects of whatever to clear the path that they needed to get the mattress upstairs.  My wife put on a protective pad, then made the bed and I flopped myself horizontal for a few minutes.  Easy to tell before and after.

IKEA allows a 100 night return policy.  At three nights it feels like a keeper.  I fall asleep more readily, feel more rested on awakening but the sleep pattern remains one of overnight awakening at about the same times as previously.  Have no idea where REM and non-REM sleep appear amid the usual three sessions of sleep.  I can now work on staying upright from the time of morning awakening until assigned bedtime, as cat-naps may be the barrier to a full night's sleep.  And I have the energy to do that after quite a long time of what is probably chronic sleep deprivation.  I'll know in a few weeks.

IKEA Misadventure

These past few months I've been diligently pursuing the twelve projects I set aside for each half year.  Some have gone to completion, most have not but most are in progress.  To force my bedroom revision, I had the ceiling painted which required creating a perimeter for the people to work.  Decades of neglected paper and other stuff moved elsewhere, only to return with my permission.  That created a new space under a window.  Since I am probably not getting enough sleep in part due to use of the bed for reading, TV, Tablet and other activities that should be done elsewhere, I decided to place a lounge chair and reading lamp in that space.  When I had my my office, I also wanted a reading chair, obtaining a perfect one for me at IKEA but gave it to one of the secretaries when I closed shop.  Since it would be ideal for what I need now I headed off to IKEA, usually a fun outing even if I only buy anything beyond lunch a fraction of the visits.

First stop, lounge chairs.  They hardly had any, only low end bentwood or high end bulky stuff that looked less sturdy and about the same price that I could get at a local low end furniture store.  I could use some other stuff too, so I looked at kitchen tables, again flimsier than what I have now, though they did have some kitchen chairs that might suffice, again mostly less sturdy looking than what I have now which has already lasted 35+ years.  On to lunch at least.  Usually get gravlax, but this time decided to get a marinated salmon sandwich.  I can count on lunch, and coffee still only 75 cents.  Bun fell apart, salmon had the consistency and appearance of canned salmon, threw out most of the coffee.  Ooky but at least economical.  Then to their Marketplace a place where you browse and collect ideas to make your environment more appealing by purchasing stuff that you really don't need.  Wanted to get two lamps, a high end one for the living room and the reading lamp for the bedroom.  One possible reading lamp seemed suitable but rickety.  Not even close to finding a table lamp comparable to the one being replaced.

Passed the checkout empty-handed, not unusual for me, and disappointed, my first bust tour of IKEA.  At least I could pick up something at their food market.  Looked at herring, good price, no Kosher certification on any of the types.  I like their sparking pear juice.  Kosher certification on that disappeared as well.  Probably Swedes making a political statement or objecting to Rabbinical extortion.  I can ask their customer service inquiry later.

So I headed back to I-95, still needing some environmental upgrade, not really needing lunch.

Jewish Young Adults in Attendance

Not that many youngsters attend shul or any other AKSE activity other than Hebrew School, and there aren't all that many of them either.  In my day we had a full Junior Congregation linked to Hebrew School along with evening childhood activities like weekly dance lessons.  Post Bar Mitzvah, there was a very tenuous Hebrew High School program, what would be called Confirmation Class nowadays but social activities for the teenagers continued in a big way, from USY which was really more of a basketball night and weekly bowling league which met at the synagogue after school for transport.  As a consequence of this we maintained acquaintances with each other to about our second year of college, when final dispersal took place only to reconnect some forty years later as Facebook Friends.  About half of my FB Friends had a link to the JCC of Spring Valley and some maintain synagogue ties now, though most have been part of the larger attrition from Conservative institutions.

So where might today's Jewish youth be?  I suspect they are blended in with everyone else, though probably still extractable with a social parallel to the lab sep funnel.  Last evening after shabbos I attended a concert which brought me to the U of Delaware campus.  Since I got there early and wanted to keep a commitment to myself of trying out two unfamiliar beers each month, I wandered along the town's Main Street checking out ice cream places and pubs that might have a craft brew that I could down in about a half hour before the concert.  There was a place nearby but no room at the bar and the gelato line moved too slowly so I departed.  Further down the street was a sports bar with all sorts of offerings though none truly new to me that would satisfy my project.  While the first place had some sophistication, and probably expense, to attract professors or others who already had steady incomes, this second place had students occupying nearly all of its floor space, most with a beer in hand, some alcohol already soaking their white matter, and no doubt some phony ID's in their wallets.  As I wandered in, some of the kids picked up on my trimmed gray beard, bolo tie and crotcheted kippah.  Many were actually rather solicitous of me or at least curious as to why I was in their neighborhood.  As I departed back to the street, others also picked up on the kippah, approached me to demonstrate how little they learned in Hebrew School but were rather friendly and most important they were present and identifiable amid a very large population of students and able to seek me out without my approaching them first.

The following day I needed to see some patients, a project less difficult than anticipated, so I used the extra time to detour my customary route home to stop at IKEA.  Sunday afternoon attracts a lot of shoppers of a very diverse range of ages and other elements of appearance.  Many young families present, numerous ethnicities with a variety of conversational languages going on around me as people looked at sample kitchens, shelving, and any other furniture item that can be configured into a flat box for transport home.  While I did not hear any Hebrew or see any kippot, the volume of young families seemed staggering.  If the people we hoped would enhance our diversity at AKSE were not to be found at shul, they were very likely to be wandering the floors of IKEA instead.

There is a certain entropy to Jewish life, at least locally.  Kids at the U of Delaware could see my kippah and greet me in the broken Hebrew that they retain as a residual from Hebrew School but at least they recognized it and have some polite attachment to it.  The people at IKEA are enhancing their home lives in some way by shopping there.  U of D gatherings were a public expression of community, IKEA a more private array of personal aspirations taking shape in a public forum.  If that's where these people are then the honcho's of the declining Jewish institutions will have to infiltrate their turf to capture their interest.  No amount of programming will bring these people to AKSE, not even with a keg of beer and no ID checker.  The people places like AKSE or Federation might like to entice will not be at the university for very long but they will be at places like IKEA creating their homes indefinitely.  They will need to choose from innumerable options but whatever they take home then has to be assembled to become usable.  We need to think a little more like them than like us if we really desire to have them include established organizations of Jewish interest among their destinations.