IKEA and the Flatpacks

Recently I called into Ikea with Mrs P to purchase a spice rack. We left two hours later and £600 lighter with a trolley so stuffed full of gear that we were debating whether we'd get it in one car run or two back to the house.
Currently, back at the house, I'm assembling my third shoe rack. Although putting together the furniture is a pain in the rear end I take my hat off to the furniture designers and also those who devised the construction plans. The latter no longer comes into 25 languages but with no lingua at all. All you get is a series of diagrams but they're easy enough to follow. Happily nowadays with this kind of flat pack furniture you get a second chance. If you go wrong you can unscrew something and go backwards way. In the early days of flatpack you had no such alternative. One wrong move and usually the panel you were wrongly forcing into the wrong front section of the drawer was slotted in for life and you had no choice but to look at your mistake hanging off the incomplete music centre for the rest of its natural life. Worse too, the instructions would come with a note telling you that school kids in East Germany assembled the same bit of flatpack perfectly in less than 40 minutes!

We never did find the spice rack.