Well, my wife has done it again. While I was slaving away on a business trip in Europe, she was out buying furniture. Being true to Rubbing Nickels, I successfully talked her out of the ridiculously expensive set we couldn’t afford and instead came home to a zillion boxes from IKEA that I had to put together myself.

I’m beginning to think that each IKEA box comes with a hidden camera just to videotape people trying to put these things together in some kind of European television show aka “Ikea’s favorite home videos”. First, there is the effort of just getting everything home. My son tells me that he and my wife spent a full 25 minutes shoving boxes into the car, to which my wife’s comment was “Did I break anything inside the car?”

Once all the boxes were transported to our Rubbing Nickels home, it was my job to try and turn the various pieces into something you could sit on. Of course, I didn’t actually know what the chairs were supposed to look like, and, not being able to find the instructions in the box, it was similar to constructing a jigsaw puzzle when you don’t know what the picture looks like. I finally ended up getting a chair-like thing constructed with only four parts unused and feeling pretty proud of myself. Then my wife woke up from her nap (I had the twelve-hour flight but she needed a nap, go figure) and pointed out that

1. the instructions were in some other box I hadn’t opened,
2. I needed to put the slip-cover on the various pieces BEFORE I put them together, and
3. I shouldn’t have four extra pieces of hardware. Oh well, what’s a guy to do? One hour and multiple swear words later, I took everything apart, figured out where the missing pieces went, and built my brand-new IKEA chair successfully.

There are multiple lessons to be learned here.

• First, it’s always better to save money, even if you have to swear multiple times while you’re doing it.

• Second, the instructions help but IKEA is always a little bit of guess-work when putting items together (and yes, I was supposed to have extra pieces because it is the same package of bolts for both my chair and a sofa).

• Finally, the best way to save money is not to travel, as when the Dad is away, the wife is free to play, and for that, I always end up having to pay.

David Ratner
Spouse Extraordinare and Guest Blogger
Rubbingnickels.com