Was there a time when we managed life without IKEA? For some generations this is almost unthinkable. There was a time, not long ago, when you bought furniture to last for ever. As the family grew you added to it but almost never got rid of it. Most people moved house only once or twice in a lifetime unless you were military or diplomatic. What a quaint notion in today's world.
But of course the world has always had plenty of nomads ... though today I expect we'd find that most of them get on an aeroplane and have boxes of their most precious possessions shipped or flown to their new address rather than loading up the camels or yaks and setting off on foot with it all. Does anyone have the stats on that?
Anyway we spent yesterday assembling IKEA furniture for a nomad newly arrived in Switzerland. And I once again marvelled at the cleverness of the design and the utter simplicity of almost all of it. And discovered anew that even pictures have two ways of being interpreted with the result that one major piece that took two hours to assemble has to be redone. Also that if you get the structure right, you don't have to have big heavy bits to hold the weight, for example, of an entire tablefull of crockery, cutlery and food. I guess studying what was loaded on the backs of camels and yaks, we might discover an equal amount of accumulated wisdom in the structures required to provide shelter and comfort in a nomad home.
And then there's the other wonder of IKEA - one trip there and you have an entire home! But here's the thing. When they dig up the remains of our civilisation, I wonder how may alan keys and spanners they will find and how long it will take them to piece together the IKEA story. On the other hand if all the IKEA customers are putting their no longer needed "tools" into the metal recycling bins, perhaps the secrets of IKEA will never be known to future generations.
But of course the world has always had plenty of nomads ... though today I expect we'd find that most of them get on an aeroplane and have boxes of their most precious possessions shipped or flown to their new address rather than loading up the camels or yaks and setting off on foot with it all. Does anyone have the stats on that?
Anyway we spent yesterday assembling IKEA furniture for a nomad newly arrived in Switzerland. And I once again marvelled at the cleverness of the design and the utter simplicity of almost all of it. And discovered anew that even pictures have two ways of being interpreted with the result that one major piece that took two hours to assemble has to be redone. Also that if you get the structure right, you don't have to have big heavy bits to hold the weight, for example, of an entire tablefull of crockery, cutlery and food. I guess studying what was loaded on the backs of camels and yaks, we might discover an equal amount of accumulated wisdom in the structures required to provide shelter and comfort in a nomad home.
And then there's the other wonder of IKEA - one trip there and you have an entire home! But here's the thing. When they dig up the remains of our civilisation, I wonder how may alan keys and spanners they will find and how long it will take them to piece together the IKEA story. On the other hand if all the IKEA customers are putting their no longer needed "tools" into the metal recycling bins, perhaps the secrets of IKEA will never be known to future generations.
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