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I dread trips to Ikea. Trips to Ikea mean much work for me. Being the man of the house means my wife cooks and cleans and takes care of the boy while I put together flatpack furniture.

But there are more things to dread before the actual assembly of said furniture. I’ll use this weekend as an example. We purchased three whimisical and eclectic bookcases for our office/playroom/junkroom/library/spareroom. These came flatpacked in boxes about the size of a door and weighing 75 pounds each.

My first job was to struggle with them up two flights of stairs. I made it up the first flight ok, but had to make Jen pause in her cooking and cleaning and looking after the boy to help me with them up the final flight.

Step two involves completely reorganizing the destination room to make space for the new furniture. Bear in mind that this is the room we’ve been putting stuff in that we didn’t have a place for, which is about 80% of everything we own. I emptied the room and reloaded it before I had a wall clear to put the new bookcases against.

Now it was time for the assembly. I unpacked the first box and carefully read the instructions. I inserted dowels in the right places. I tightened screws in the right spots. I installed funky widgets as instructed. For once (and I’ve done this many many many times) it all came together almost perfectly. I even managed to nail the backboard in place without exposing any nails on the other side. The second case went together equally well, and the third was going just fine until I couldn’t get the pretty bit at the top to go on right. I huffed and I puffed and I struggled and I hammered but no joy, the third case will never look as good as the other two. Sorry Jen.

But the ordeal wasn’t over yet. Oh no. Now we had three empty bookcases sitting in our spare room just begging to be filled. The rest of the afternoon was spent emptying boxes and installing their contents on our shiny new shelves. The shelves are now full, but not as full as they could be because Jen insists on having the junk interspersed with little decorative vignettes. I blame Changing Rooms.