Ikea: The Costco Of Home Furnishings

For many Americans around the country, Costco is almost like a fantasy land, where you can go in and purchase almost anything, with a heavy focus on groceries and other common purchases. But while Costco is admittedly pretty great, I personally am in love with another fantasy land of sorts, albeit one that not everyone gets the chance to go to, and one that isn’t typically frequented on a regular basis in general. I am of course talking about Ikea.

If you are in the market for new furniture, then Ikea is the place to be. They literally have furniture of all types, and of all shapes and sizes, very similar to how Costco is absolutely loaded with almost every type of consumer good imaginable. And just like Costco, the furniture prices at Ikea are second-to-none!

What I really love about Ikea is that they make the entire shopping experience feel like a ride – you essentially walk through their entire showroom along a set path and get the opportunity to check out the different furniture for yourself. Some furniture is left out on the open and sometimes they even put various pieces together to show you how a potential room might look as a whole. You can honestly spend a good hour just walking through the showroom and can even circle back to check on something that you liked in particular.

If you find something that you like, all you have to do is take note of the product number. Once you’ve finally gone through the showroom, you can then head to the warehouse level of the store and find all of the items gathered in bulk for you to collect and pay for accordingly. It’s all really quite simple and despite being a shopping experience, almost feels like a leisure-time activity. Part of that definitely has to do with the fact that there is a certain level of enjoyment involved with looking at furniture and dreaming about how it will improve the look and feel of your home, but there is just no furniture store that does it better than Ikea as a whole.

And while all of that is just fine and dandy, Ikea has another amazing benefit, and fittingly it is one that parallels Costco – they have their own restaurant! And the food is not half bad either. This means that even if you spend hours looking at furniture, you have a convenient place to eat lunch, regroup and continue your exploration of the showroom. I definitely recommend their Swedish meatballs if you’ve never had them before – after all, Ikea is a Swedish company and those meatballs are their specialty.

If you’ve never been to an Ikea before, you should definitely find one near you and take a look. Even if you aren’t necessarily looking for furniture at this exact moment in your life, there is definitely no harm is seeing just what makes Ikea so awesome beyond simply being a place to buy reasonably-priced furniture! The entire experience is one that you will certainly never forget!