All Posts Tagged With: "Ikea"

Pot brownies, grassy libraries and a monkey loose at Ikea

Photo: dichohecho on Flickr

1. Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana use in November, but feeding it to unsuspecting classmates is a half-baked plan. On Saturday, two University of Colorado at Boulder students were arrested after their professor and five classmates fell ill from unknowingly eating “marijuana-laced brownies.” University police spokesman Ryan Huff told Reuters that Thomas Cunningham, 21, and Mary Essa, 19, brought the brownies as part of a pre-exam “bring food to class” day, and that police were called after the professor complained of dizziness and drifted “in and out of consciousness.” Three of the people who ate the brownies were hospitalized, but have since been released.

2. Speaking of pot brownies, shoppers at a Toronto Ikea undoubtedly rubbed their eyes in disbelief on Sunday afternoon when a tiny monkey clad in a diaper and faux shearling coat turned up in the parking garage at the North York store. The Toronto Star reports that the monkey, later identified as Darwin, somehow managed to escape from his owner’s car. Darwin was on the lamb for about half an hour before being captured by Toronto Animal Services. Darwin’s owner, who turned himself in and signed the monkey over to the care of Animal Services, was fined $240 for owning a prohibited animal. The little guy is already a social media sensation: Twitter parody accounts @IKEAmonkey and @Ikea_monkey popped up hours after the escapade.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (December 10th edition)

When we find a bargain, are we losing our sense of value?

I just arrived home from a family trip to IKEA. From what I can understand, this is a fairly common occurrence these days, especially for university students. Unfortunately, we all grew up watching university on TV, and as a result, we aspire to chic, colour-coordinated dorm rooms with plenty of useful and attractive storage and display units. The reality of a white-washed cube with plastic, pastel drapes just isn’t going to cut it. But what are you to do without a TV budget and set designers to brighten up the place?

IKEA promises a funky, fashionable living space with a small price tag. Their slogan is an encouraging promise: “Love your home!” Build a space you love! Or, conversely, stop being lazy and give your home some love! With prices this cheap, low cashflow is no longer an excuse for a less than designer residence.

But what are we really paying for?

In my case, no matter how much I’m spending, I get a big helping of family angst on the side. This angst is not limited to the hours spent standing on white linoleum, arguing over curtain rods and bookshelves. No, it’s the purchase that keeps on giving for hours of frustration and sweat to put together those assembly-required, particle board, “home-loving” contraptions that seemed so easy and convenient at the time (“Look, dear! flat pack boxes! It will be easy to fit in our sedan!”). My friend once told me that 12% of IKEA furniture assembly ends in divorce. She was joking, barely.

Maybe we’re buying the opportunity for reinvention. Wandering through the IKEA display rooms is like visiting a hall of opportunities of what your home could be. All you need it a little POÄNG. It worked for Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer (watch the scene here).

However, with lower prices comes lower quality (no matter what the adds tell you), so that fantasy home might not last the way you want it to. According to a new book called Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Ellen Ruppel Shell, the IKEAs and Wal-marts of the world are destroying real value. By placing emphasis on price (according to the CBC, IKEA designs its products to price), we’re forgetting that you get what you pay for.

“Is it really furniture, or is it kind of the idea of furniture?” Ruppel Shell said in an interview on CBC’s The Current. “Is it a good bookcase or is it a good cheap bookcase? And I would argue it’s a good cheap bookcase. And that’s almost an oxymoron.”

She says that this bargain-hunting is polarizing the market so we’re left with a choice of high-end and pricey versus cheap and lower-quality. The middle ground of balanced value is disappearing.

This seems to be a generational gap. One commenter on the CBC story, a second-hand-store shopper, remarked that the quality, second-hand items she loved to find in these stores were disappearing as the older generation who bought them first hand literally dwindles. I do point out that this commenter is another example of the discount culture: she searches for the quality in bargains. It seems no one is willing to shell out for quality anymore.

It’s a hard situation for university students. Our spending ability is limited, but we are the politically active ones right? And organic/green/local comes at a cost. I guess we need to decide if we value the added cost. If we haven’t completely lost the concept of true value already.