Of course, you realize... this means war.

Yesterday evening I shopped at Ikea for the first time. It is now abundantly clear to me that Ikea is, in fact, a declaration of war upon the rest of the world by the Dutch and the Swiss.

Seriously, though, stores which sell merchandise the size of beds absolutely should not be self-service. I didn't know Ikea was self-service before I went, so I went to Ikea by myself rather than recruiting friends. I was strong enough to lift, for brief periods of time, the box containing the bed frame. I was not strong enough to be able to lift it one handed so that my other hand was free to steady the cart it needed to be carefully balanced on. And when I tried to add the queen sized mattress on top of that, the whole thing tried to fall over. Thankfully some fellow customers volunteered their help. And, after the joys of self-checkout, another customer in the parking lot assisted me with getting it in my car, and pointed out where exactly they keep the twine for tying things on so I could use it to tie the luggage compartment door closed. Thus ended my Ikea experience.

Things went much more smoothly when I got home. Wrestled the mattress inside. Then attacked the box with the bed frame with a pocket knife. Tore it apart and took most of the pieces inside individually. A few are still in the trunk, but I should bring them in this evening and work on assembling my new bed. So no more sleeping on air mattresses for me. :) I did sleep on my new mattress last night, even though the bed wasn't assembled yet, and it's already REALLY comfortable. I'm glad I decided to do this. And having an under-bed area again, rather than a mattress sitting on the floor, should help me organize my apartment better. I'm in a rather cramped efficiency and space is at a bit of a premium. I was originally thinking of getting a super-efficient desk/dresser/closet/bunkbed combo thingy, but I decided that just wasn't practical. Just the frame would have been over a thousand dollars and assembly looked like it would be a real bitch.

This evening, I'm stopping at Bed Bath and Beyond or someplace similar and looking into a nice new bedspread and sheets and such for it. Trying to make my apartment a bit more uniquely "mine". Also going to see about rearranging my existing furniture. I think if I make a few changes I can make the apartment area much more efficient and put things in areas that are a bit more logically related to one another. Should look really good once I find the right spot for everything.