Owning my ‘peak stuff’ status and trying to avoid peak hours

Saturday night is the perfect time to hit up Ikea, I told myself.

It’ll be empty, I thought. People will be out for dinner, out for the evening, doing other things. I’ll have the place to myself !

Um … no. Just no. Just so you know … no. False, nope, no.

Fighting a cold, I had these thoughts while languishing in that sweet spot between the Tylenol kicking in and being pumped from finding an ankle length parka half off at The Bay a day earlier. (Sorry — Hudson’s Bay. It’ll always be The Bay to me.) So basically, I was feeling good, feeling delusional, feeling ready to take on a challenge.

I’d been putting off the Ikea trip for weeks. I needed a chest of drawers in which to keep socks, jammies, underwear — my hearty flannel and wool “dainties” stored in wire baskets, on display for all the tradespeople in my life. I’m in a new (ish) place and it seemed like there were many. And call me crazy, but I just felt like maybe I should be hiding that stuff.

So I strategized about when to visit the mammoth furniture megastore, when it might be the least busy: one Wednesday afternoon was a zoo and so was a Monday morning.

Which brings us to Saturday night. I thought I was thinking out- side the box. So was everyone else who lives between Oakville and Niagara Falls.

Last week, Ikea’s head of sustainability, Steve Howard, told a London audience that our society has basically hit “peak home furnishings,” among other things (red meat, sugar, yada yada yada).

His words played in my head as I tapped a photo of a chest of drawers on my Ikea app, tossing it into a virtual basket where I could see its aisle location and all that. There would be no mucking around on this trip — no perusing the bedding and rugs, no daydreaming about a new kitchen, no stopping to sniff the cinnamon rolls. I have hit peak stuff. I parked the car near the exit doors, and with the app open on my phone, grabbed a cart and made my way to Aisle 14 to collect the boxes. It was so busy, I wondered if the store was giving away money or free doughnuts or what. Nope, it just seems this is a thing — grab the family and head to Ikea on a Saturday night. You’ve been warned.

As mentioned, I was feeling under the weather and overheated in my floor length parka, and had no patience for the small blond woman I could see out of the corner of my eye, pushing her cart toward me. I was ahead of her, making my way to the self-serve checkout, but she was on a mission.

Slowed by the awkwardness of my cart and the heaviness of the boxes, we pulled up to the line at the same time. And then, with that warm Christmas feeling of giving and goodwill well behind us, she shoved ahead of me, without so much as a glance back. She was soon joined by three hyper kids (who, clearly, had consumed the cinnamon rolls), and a husband who seemed lost and unclear as to what to do while his wife was otherwise occupied.

I seethed but said nothing. It’s my new motto in life: swallow the rage. If I can do it while scrolling through social media, I can do it in a checkout line at Ikea. And anyway, she would get hers.

As I followed a throng of people out the doors, I passed her crew lapping up ice cream cones, probably courtesy of the dad. Good one.

I’ll just be on my way home to drink wine, lady. Have a good night.

Ikea: Monday mornings, first thing. It’s busy, but not a Saturday night.