Daily Movement

Went to Ikea’s sales-tax free sale, but wound up leaving without buying anything. There a couple of good reasons for this:

• Ikea doesn’t allow rain checks so if you can’t find what you wanted, you just have to come back again (and again and again …).
• Believe it or not, TJ Maxx has the same quality of furniture at reasonable prices. You are paying a premium for the Ikea brand and hype.

and less practically,

• Ikea is overexposed and overhyped… I like the Fight Club scene where the main character considers the addiction to Ikea furniture as an evil. And we know what he winds up doing… in the movie anyway.
• It’s the Ikea color scheme:

  “To create a neutral color scheme in a room, use a range of “un-colors” like brown, beiges, gray, taupes, and whites.” – Furnishing your first home

To add, Costco doesn’t have the best prices or service.

• You can find sale items at walgreen’s for instance or safeway that are lower than Costco’s never-sale items.
• You have to wait in lines that look like an airport terminal traffic jam.
• You have to pay in cash or whatever disadvantaged credit card that is trying to peddle market share (first discover, now American Express).
• You have to pay $40/year just to be able to walk in and look around.
• You wind up buying mass quantities because they don’t have anything smaller than 1 gallon of olive oil, or because you dread having to stand in line for 30 minutes to just buy a couple of items.