Apartment Shopping Tips – how NOT to shop in Ikea.

A bit of a life update: 

So on Monday, Willow and I moved into our apartment (pictured above) in Vancouver after staying out of town waiting for it to become available. Thank god Willow was here as I couldn’t lift a thing!

The sun was beaming down and I felt great, however I was so nervous as well. We’ve been waiting to get into this place for so long that I’d built up this picture of what it would be like. I’d been imagining something that was quite spacious, new and clean. I’d been looking at the floor plans umming and ahhing for months about what kind of sofa we’d get, or the size of the bed etc.

We wanted to get our place kitted out pronto, so we went and spent a day in Ikea in Coquitlam getting the basics for our place on the Friday before our move in date. We were like kids in a sweet shop; it was brilliant. Well, it was at first. After 9 hours it was a bit of a drag.

What we learnt – don’t make the same mistake:

We went round and wrote down every single thing we wanted by name and code to make life easier when ordering at the end. From our pots and pans to knives and forks, vases, we really hit it up it there.

When we reached the ordering station at the end of our maHoosive Ikea journey, the cashier said that they only deliver furniture. kfopdhgjhptzhopjzdgphjpdtbjh!

Baring in mind we needed a delivery as we don’t have a vehicle here, it was going to be very difficult to get everything to our place without one. We had 4 booklets worth of items to order, and only 3 of them were furniture. I kindly asked where it says this and whether this was some ‘general knowledge’ about Ikea I’d missed, the lady said it was in the ‘fine print’ somewhere. Fine print my arse. I was not a happy Peach and mentioned to Willow sarcastically that he needed to make sure that we always read the fine print next time we go shopping…

Just to put the icing on the cake, we went to order our furniture at the end and our card got declined. We’d reached a limit for the day on our Scotiabank Cards which we’d never actually used before The limit was set so low we wouldn’t have even been able to just buy our bed and sofa. So we left Ikea, after 9 hours, with – nothing.

When moving away and ordering from Ikea…

1. Remember Ikea only delivers furniture so don’t waste half your life in there
2. Don’t rely on ordering everything on the Ikea website as a lot of things you may see are not available online
3. Make sure you’ve got enough wriggle room on your card
4. Don’t rush at buying things. Ikea is great for basics, but I’d not recommend their bed sheets or cushions. You can pick up nicer things along the way 🙂

We’ve managed to do some great exploring this week, so keep ya eyes peeled for a post in the next few days!

Em x