Ikea Cheap and Cheerful
View Map
Recommendation added: 21/06/2006 15:43
By: katygriff (YSUK rating +283)katygriff has been thanked 2 times for this contribution
"Now I love to shop like all girls do and I have become well accustomed to Ikea over the years.
-----
How my love for Ikea started?
Well my mom has always been obsessed with the shop and our house does look like one big Ikea showroom. Now I have to tell you that it is one particular product that fuelled my love for going to Ikea when I was younger and that was the Dime bars they sell there. Seriously they sell a mini version in a huge bag that me and my sister used to beg my mom to buy us then we would eat them on the car journey home.
-----
How my love for Ikea has continued?
We are only a 20 minute drive to our nearest Ikea so it is easy to get to and therefore efficient for us to buy all of our household products.
-----
What is Ikea?
In case you did not know, Ikea is a fantastic shop which sells household products and furniture. They originate from Sweden way back in 1943 where it was founded by Ingvar Kamprad. Ikea originally only sold pens, jewellery and wallets and other small items. In 1955 Ikea began top design its own furniture and from then till the present day Ikea has established itself as a cheap alternative to every other household store. In fact its motto is 'affordable solutions for better living'.
-----
The main shop.
Now I will actually run down the Ikea shop in more detail bearing in mind that I am describing my experience of the store by me.
The Showrooms:
The first thing you come to in Ikea is the showrooms. Now in the store by our home you travel up some stairs and come to the living room and dining room section first. Now basically the Ikea showrooms have been made up to look exactly like proper rooms so you will find books, pictures and little finishing touches in each room. This helps so much if you are looking for specific ideas on what to do with a room. You then come to bedrooms, followed by offices and then kitchens to finish off. Each room is individual with varying colours and themes so know matter what age you are or what you like you are bound to find something to suit your tastes. Also mixed in within the showrooms are baskets which will contain special offers. I think on my last visit they were selling mouse mats for 10p. Bargain!!!
There is also a section in the showroom with sofas and chairs and I love this section as you can find some great things. The best bargain we got from this section was a red leather rotating chair for £100 and it is now placed in my sisters' room and we all fight for it when we are in there. The other section I love is looking at the desks. My desk was £129 and it is huge and very office like and I love it. If you are sceptical and thinking that the quality of the furniture must not be any good then I will tell you are wrong straight out. All furniture I have bought from Ikea which includes my desk, TV cabinet, bedside table and chest of drawers (all found in the showroom section) have lasted for years and never break. The quality is excellent and I have been more than happy with my purchases.
If you see an item in the showroom that you would like to buy then you have to look at the tag that will be attached to it and jot down the following things;
- The item number.
- The colour.
- The price.
- Aisle number.
This is because all of the larger items are located in the warehouse which in our store is downstairs. Located around the showrooms you will notice will be small Ikea wooden pencils and paper so that you can jot down all of the necessary information. Do not worry about finding your items as there are always members of staff by the warehouse that are willing to help you find what you are after.
The restaurant / café:
Now this is another highlight of visiting Ikea because the food is gorgeous. The seating area is large so you should always be able to find a table and they house a good selection of hot and cold food and drink. The cold foods consist of sandwiches, cakes and salads while the hot food contains meatballs and fish and chips. Now if you go I will recommend a meal to you which are what I always have when I visit. Meatballs, chips, gravy with cranberry sauce. Now I am not even a big fan of meat but yum, yum and yum. It costs around £2.99 for a small which still gives you around 10 meatballs and it is delicious. There have been times when my mom, my sister and I all drive up to Ikea just so that we can have our tea there. All food is reasonably priced and there is something for everyone.
Downstairs:
Now I was not sure what to call this section as I suppose it is just the miscellaneous section. Here you can find all of the small household appliances you need.
The first thing that I stumble across in my Ikea is kitchen products so here you can find your cutlery, cooking utensils and tea towels etc… Now they actually sell things very cheap and on occasions you can spot real bargains. The best bargain we ever had were 10p wine glasses. We bought 50 of them for £5 and that was about 3 years ago and to this day only 1 of them has broke. Also you will be able to find mugs, plates, dishes etc… for around 50p each. They also sell dinner sets so you can buy them all together.
We then come to the picture section which is great. Here they sell great art prints of various sizes and they are really cheap. We bought a picture of a bright green frog just peeping over a leaf of the size 50cm by 70cm and it was £10 and that was with a fitted frame. It looks great in my bedroom in my cottage in Wales. Also my office building tends to buy the scenic pictures from there as they are big and stand out and still look professional. You can also buy pictures that are bigger and smaller and you can also buy the frames separately. Also being sold is cards with prints on and because they are blank they can be sent for any occasion.
Then we have the fabric section. Here you can find cushions, and pillow covers. Also the main thing here is the fabric that you pay for by metre. They have a fantastic selection and price depends upon the fabric but it is generally very reasonable. This is where I tend to go for material to make curtains with as it works out a bit of extra work for me to do them but it does work out a lot cheaper.
Then we have the lighting section. Now for some reason I am obsessed with lighting so I love this section. They sell lights for your ceiling as well as table lights. They are also really cheap (I bet you are fed up of me saying that by now but it is just so true). Ceiling and wall lights consist of very traditional designs such as just a normal bulb with a light shade, then they go very modern with silver spotlights and then they go very wacky with traffic light wall lights and different children's designs. For the table lights they have some mad ones. Again some of them are very traditional but they also have some mad ones like the one I fell in love with was an egg shaped light with plastic feet. The thing to remember about Ikea though is that they do change their stock regularly and the next time I went to get my egg light it was gone. Also the other lights they do well are the floor lights that come up very tall. I had one with a silver stand that is about 6 foot tall and it was £20 which was a brilliant price and it looks lovely in my bedroom.
Then you will find the section that deals with all bathroom appliances and storage for all rooms. The kind of products for the bathroom are mirrors and cabinets. The storage products can be things like wooden or metal boxes, laundry baskets and storage containers. Not the best section as I never think they have a particularly wide range of items.
The next section is for rugs and floor coverings. Now the rugs are the same price as everywhere to be honest but you can get some bargains and the price varies from anything like £15 - £500. You should be able to find something that you like as they have a huge range to suit any taste. Once I had a blue and white spotted rug for £15 which was huge and it lasted a good few years before I outgrew my original taste.
There is now a plant section that you can walk through. They sell artificial and real plants plus all of the food and pots you would need to keep them alive. They also sell decorations such as glass nuggets that you can use to make things look more decorative.
The last place to visit downstairs is the warehouse. This is where you will find all of your large furniture such as beds, desks or shelving units. There will be trolleys located nearby so that you can load all of your items into them and staff will help if you need them to. The warehouse is labelled and each item is placed in item number order so they are easy to find.
-----
More to see.
When you have visited the main shop there are still a couple of things that you can do.
Go have something to eat:
In our Ikea, at the exit there is a small seating area where you can have a drink and a hotdog. The hotdogs are gorgeous (sorry Patch if you are listening) and I eat them within about 10 seconds which is not great considering they are £1.50 each. You can also buy ice creams here and generally just have a relax after that hard day of shopping.
Go buy something to eat for later:
Visit the food shop where you can buy Swedish foods including the meatballs you can find in the restaurant upstairs. Also there are a lot of biscuits, sweets and chocolate you can buy. Like I told you at the beginning of this review, the little dime bars are fantastic.
Sales:
The last thing to do is to visit the sale section. This is a little shop just outside which sells sale stock which usually means you can find Christmas decorations in May but never mind.
-----
Now Ikea is a fantastic place to visit and the fact that you can kit your whole house out from here is fantastic. The car parking is free and there is plenty of it so you should always find a space. I could seriously spend a day here and so could my family. I am planning to move into my own house with my boyfriend next year and I can guarantee you that I will be making a lot of trips to Ikea.
There is one little warning though as the prices are so cheap you will be tempted to keep plonking things into your basket but try not to as they do add up so keep a track on how much you are spending. Also Ikea can get very busy on a weekend so because it is open till about 10pm I would recommend visiting on a week night.
You can find a lot more information about Ikea at www.ikea.com
The Ikea near me in Wednesbury is open at the following times;
Monday – Friday – 10am – 10pm
Saturday – 9am – 8pm
Sunday – 11am – 5pm
Thanks for reading.
xxx"
Was this recommendation useful?
|
