\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nit\u2019s disgusting that ikea exists. international finance capital making styleless, placeless cardboard\u00a0\u2018furniture\u2019 that isn\u2019t even worth the cost of moving it. the assembly instructions are all diagrams so they can abstract away from human language. don\u2019t fall for it! buy furniture from the artisans of yr nation and pass it down to yr kids so they can pass it down to theirs. if you want cheap shit, hit an antique store & know someone who has a truck
Tbf Ikea does sell some higher-end wooden furniture too, it\u2019s just not what they\u2019re known for
anyway this reminds me of that time someone tried to convince me to throw away my solid birch writing desk and matching chair to replace it with Ikea particleboard bc \u201cit\u2019s old\u201d \ud83d\ude44\ud83d\ude44\ud83d\ude44
I\u2019ve aquired a lot of nice things from people getting shittier but newer things, like cooking pans.
If op thinks Ikea is bad, I hope they never go to Walmart. Like, most Ikea stuf at least looks good at some point and an actual designer was involved.
I don\u2019t get the complaints about ikea instructions, IME they\u2019ve been excellent as long as you pay attention.
My grandmother collected antiques and had a lot of children to give them to when she died, and frankly a lot of those antiques just ended up in a corner somewhere because furniture is not something you can easily just make room for on short notice! Like generally when you move out you want a kitchen table then, not when your parents die, and when they do die you don\u2019t suddenly have room for a second one. A lot of things work that way, you\u2019ve got to be careful about assuming people want all your heirlooms.
The one thing that really stands out to me is this really, really nice dining table my grandmother had \u2013 it was big enough to seat three families at Christmas, gorgeously carved, with a dark stain. Basically nobody has room in their life for a table like that, so when she died it went to her daughter, a cat lady who lived out in the country in a house that smelled like cat pee, and she put it in an unheated, questionably-sealed shed with a tarp over it and it\u2019s been there for 25 years now so god knows if it\u2019s still in any condition to use. That kind of thing happens a lot! I imagine kaumnyakte\u2019s answer here would be along the lines of \u201cyou have a social obligation not to be a reclusive cat lady\u201d but the point is that if it\u2019s your kids you only have so much control over it.
Ultimately this is just the Road to Wigan Pier water pump thing again: those traditional families that bought furniture from artisans and passed it down through generations would have shopped at Ikea, and eaten at McDonalds, and worn disposable fast fashion, if those things had been feasible for them at the time, and the objectively-better-quality alternatives would have been luxuries for the rich and titled, as they are now. People choosing mass-produced shitty things over high-quality artisanal things are mostly making rational decisions, and it\u2019s good to make them aware of the relative lifetimes of these goods, but even with full foreknowledge most of them are still going to get the flat-pack particle board bookshelf.
Yeah what are you doing that you know all these rich people who are getting rid of nice furniture you can just have? Because I haven\u2019t got that figured outYeah what are you doing that you know all these rich people who are getting rid of nice furniture you can just have? Because I haven\u2019t got that figured out
The stuff at my local Goodwill or vintage shop or whatever is pretty much always either ten times more expensive than the Ikea equivalent, either that or it\u2019s also made of cheap particle board and much uglier than the Ikea equivalent.
Intergenerational transfer of furniture and home outfittings used to take the form more of housewarming and wedding gifts than “heirlooms” passed down as inheritance (and note that a loom, a high-investment fundamental one-per-household productive tool, was somewhat equivalent to male-inherited land)
But also the eldest generation’s goods would be mixed back with descendants households before death, as they finished out their lives living with heirs. You might grow up an eldest son eating at a table, take a wife and bring her into the household with that table, and eventually at death of your mother inherit the household, including the table that served you all along, and raise your heirs at it.
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