You Shouldn't Buy in IKEA or The Smart Mans Furnishing

You shouldn’t be buying anything in IKEA especially not furniture. I say that knowing well enough that the Swedish giant became such a staple of our lives we often just go there for fun. My brother even used to take dates there to see what they would argue about in this theater of shared life. For some IKEA is a synonym for affordable furniture, for others it’s the only real furniture store they know of, but regardless of what you think it’s nearly always a bad choice.

Let’s take apart the 4 legs upon which this BEKVÄM stool stands - price, quality, customization and ease. Each of us needs a different combo of those, but all would want it cheap, good, made to our exact specification and easy to assemble. I’d argue IKEA covers only the last.

The problem

Take for example the LAGKAPTEN / ADILS table that goes for 295 nis. Sure it might look cheap to you, but is it quality wood? is it good looking? is that exactly what you need? The table plate is made of MDF (compressed wood fibers) with a hollow cardboard honeycomb core - basically the cheapest thing that still holds together. The manual says, and I quote:

אין להניח על אזור קטן במשטח השולחן משקל מרוכז העולה על 15 ק”ג.

Which translates to

Do not place a concentrated weight exceeding 15 kg on a small area of the table surface.

And that sounds like an alarm going “that’s a piece of shit” over and over again.

Concentrated load test

Hollow-core deskMDF + cardboard honeycomb0 kg

Rated 15 kg, concentrated.

Alex’s planksolid wood0 kg

Solid wood. Bring it on.

Cast-iron pan5 kgBooks10 kgCRT monitor20 kgReset

Drag a weight onto a desk, or tap a weight and then a desk. Tap a placed weight twice to take it off.

Fine, let’s look for a better one, how about ANFALLARE / OLOV it looks like good wood? Well, it’s not, they even call it cardboard “European cardboard with 70% refurbished material” to be precise and put a price of 735 on it, add the shipping because I know it won’t fit in your Mini Cooper and you’re looking at an easy 1000 spend for a hollow-core table.

If I point a shining new revolver to your head and ask to name your biggest expenses in life, you’d probably be wondering if a gun is necessary, but after I convince you that it is, you’d come up with a list of 10 things none of which are “cardboard table”. Even now that you read it, you might think to yourself that 1000 for a table is not that much. But this quickly adds up. Shelves, coffee table, the list goes on and quickly overwhelms.

So IKEA is expensive and doesn’t cover your exact needs. What can we do?

So what is this fuss all about?

I think I found a solution that not only can save you thousands, provide real custom quality items but can give you the sort of independence people nowadays crave that much, give you meaning and connect to something real. I think you should build things yourself.

It’s all about the mindset

I just bought 6sqm of wood for 600 nis. I already made a 3m shelf for my plants out of it that would probably have cost me double the price of the wood in IKEA, and I still have more wood than I know what to do with.

It’s not that I think you should build EVERYTHING yourself. I don’t expect you to build a fridge, but I do expect you to find a better deal. You won’t believe the shit I’ve seen: people buy a fridge, it doesn’t fit (or a shelf breaks, or the cooler gets stuck), so they call the company and get it swapped. The guy who brings the new one MUST take the old one away. Not back to the seller, mind you, just OUT of the apartment. Then some dude from Krayot buys it for 200 nis and resells it for 500. Every day. I bought my Bosch washing machine and Beko fridge for 800, with a year of insurance.

A water pipe broke one morning on my balcony, I fixed it in an hour and spent 26 nis on it all.

The list goes on and on but the point is the same, you can teach yourself to fix stuff, to work with wood just a bit and you’ll save yourself thousands, build things designed for you but more importantly you’ll get independence from all of this bullshit.

How do I do it?

Go buy yourself:

• screwdriver and set of heads
• jigsaw and a set of blades
• adjustable wrench
• small hammer
• screws and nails
• meter
• clamps
• insulating tape

Buy it on AliExpress, really, it shouldn’t all cost more than 500 nis and it should last you till you know what you’re doing and buy better tools. With this toolset you’ll be able to fix pipes, outlets, home appliances, build shelves, tables and more.

Start taking control of your life

If something broke and you think of throwing it away, take it apart instead. It’s fun, you’ll learn a lot and with time you’ll be able to fix things. Who said that a broken leg means your table belongs in the trash? Cut it apart and make shelves, go buy a new leg or better make one. Stop listening to people who say “this is how things are” - there are very few things you can do nothing about. Your PC acts up, your Steam game that you paid for stopped working? Stop tolerating this bullshit. Start small and grow from there.