Trunk Report

Moving house is definitely one of the most stressful experiences you can go through. This is especially true if you need to make all your furniture from flat packed IKEA kits, which can take hours even though they are meant to be easy! Here are my top tips for making flat packed kits (I’m a bit of an expert now).

Number 1 – Read the instructions carefully. People told me this before I stared, and I did try to be as careful as possible, but you need to be really thorough in making sure that you’ve got something the right way around. Most mistakes can be corrected – although that involves a lot more stress and trying to unscrew things back to a point where you can fix it – but sometimes you can’t. We only made one bad mistake  – hammering in a one way plastic “nail” (sorry for the un-technical term) – but luckily the end result doesn’t look too bad.

Also, don’t be fooled by the instructions when trying to put together big items. If it says you need two people to put it up, then you probably need three. Putting together a large wardrobe while balancing it on your back isn’t a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Of course, the simple solution to all these problems is to not buy flat packed furniture from IKEA. It is a cheap way of setting up a home though – we saved a huge amount of money as our flat is unfurnished and hence we had to buy a lot of stuff. If we’d gone “upmarket” then it would of cost thousands. IKEA aren’t too bad either, the instructions are good on the whole, and for the price you can’t really complain. Although it would be nice if they entered the modern era but allowing you to order ALL their catalogue online, rather than just a select few items. Does anyone know why they do this? Seems very strange to me, and could mean they are missing out on potential customers.