know how every once in a while, you embark on a task which seems simple enough, but before you know it, has spiralled out of control and become an all-consuming soul-sucking time-warping behemoth project? That was what happened to our bedroom this weekend.

It started out all so innocently – the room needed a tidy, and more storage space so we could eliminate the need to fold our clothes in piles on the floor. So we headed to the much dreaded Ikea with a small shopping list: a dresser, some shelving, and a tall, narrow bin for the recyclables in the kitchen. Like heat seeking missiles, we whizzed through the labrynth maze of showrooms and displays. Along the way, we also decided we needed a mattress topper, a bedside light and some pillowcases.

And what did we emerge with? Three hours later we wrestled out a large 63 kilo dresser in two gargantuan flat-packs (with a clever scheme to consolidate *every piece of clothing we owned or possibly could ever own in the future* in one place), mountains of unassembled storage boxes (in lieu of shelving – J has an almost pathological phobia of *shelves*, it seems. god forbid we should actually put things up on the wall, instead of wedged under the bed), a flour sieve (for my moments of baking inspiration), and bags of yummy, yet smelly gelee moss – Swedish gummy rats (what can i say, we went shopping hungry).

Heaved the entire thing through sheer brute force up three flights of stairs without breaking any bones, or popping any lungs, tore open the boxes, and I began to assemble like a woman possessed, while J mucked about with the internet connection and transferring ripped dvd movies from the neighbours pc (heavily weighted towards adolescent slapstick – “dodgeball” anyone?) only to discover after an hour crawling on all fours with little wooden dowels that the flaming dresser was missing about 6 long support lengths.

you know, to hold the thing together.

swearing bloody blue murder, i stuffed all 3,704 individual dowels, drawer rails, washers, and other assorted miscellaneous parts *back* into the two torn boxes, and the next morning we resignedly lugged the monstrosity all the way *back* to ikea.

when I told the woman at returns that there were parts missing, she said snottily, “I can tell you why there are pieces missing. the numbers don’t match.”

to which I replied, “the numbers do too match! see? 400.347.299.116.000.013 *here*, and 400.347.299.116.000.013 *here* on this box! see, see?”

she sighed and rolled her eyes, and in a tone as if she was trying to conduct a conversation on nuclear physics with a fetus, said, “no *here*, this teeny tiny microscopic *Batch number*, you pea-brain!!” (okay, so she didn’t actually say, pea-brain. but it was heavily implied.)

Oh. that.

deciding to get a smaller, more manageable piece of furniture, we went back into the evil warehouse, and emerged only one hour later with an only-marginally-lighter dresser unit, wicker baskets (for socks), a lamp, and a little jewelery-accessories-perfume-dressertop-organiser-thingie with no fewer than 6 little drawers to individually build.

loading up the car, went to “homegoods”, still in search of the increasing elusive recycling bin, and mattress topper. no luck, but did manage to add a new mop to our laundry list. went to “argos” (which is a subject unto itself, however, suffice it to say, it’s catalogue shopping for boys) where we finally found a matress topper and a mop. still no recycling bin.

tossing in the towel and conceding defeat, we headed home and began cleaning the room from top to bottom – organising, discarding, dusting, clearing, stowing, and hoovering, finishing just in time for bed.

our room is so pretty now – except for the large flatpack in the middle of the floor that I keep smashing my toe on. i’m too afraid to open it.

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