Wally Spiers: IKEA is a gigantic place you could get lost in

I didn’t pay much attention to the large building going up alongside Interstate 64 in St. Louis this past year as I drove back and forth to the farm in Missouri.

I always look at the large grain elevators along there and smile at the incongruity of these symbols of small towns that seem to have been plopped down in the middle of a city.

I’m not sure I noticed the new building at all until one day last summer when I came around the curve from the west just past Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and there on the left loomed this giant building which was suddenly bright blue with a yellow IKEA sign.

I didn’t even know they were coming to town. I had heard a lot about the Swedish company and I saw some jokes about it, including the definition on the online Urban Dictionary about getting IKEA’d, which is when someone unexpectedly gives you a gift that needs assembly.

And then there is the joke that if a couple is considering getting married, they should go to IKEA together. If they are still speaking after they leave the store, they have a good shot at a successful marriage. My son-in-law told me that one.

He and my daughter took my wife and me to the iconic store last week. People of my generation have no business wandering through IKEA alone. It’s a younger generation type of place.

True, they have food and bathrooms, televisions and lots of beds, so if you got lost you wouldn’t suffer greatly, I guess.

Actually, as usual, I am way behind. From what I have been reading online, the only cool way to shop IKEA is online where people write blog entries about their favorite IKEA items.

But I’m a hands-on type of guy so I needed to go. For people like me who have trouble making decisions it can be hell. They have hundreds of items just for storing stuff. I don’t know how one would decide on the correct basket or shelf.

I was given instructions on how to shop in the store but I didn’t listen so I don’t remember them. But somehow I survived. Probably because of the arrows on the floor showing me which way to go.

The store is gigantic. Someone told me how many square feet were in the place but it didn’t compute. It is like saying the sun is 93 million miles from the Earth. Who can comprehend giant numbers?

I know from online research that the company began in 1943 and the letters in the name stand for the founder’s initials plus the initial of his hometown.

They have 360 stores in 47 countries unless they have opened more recently, which is possible. The Kansas City area already had a store which was one up on St. Louis. Of course they also have a professional football that isn’t threatening to leave.

The store has a parking garage, a play area, a cafeteria, a food store and thousands and thousands of home furnishings items, including a few live plants.

I can’t comment on the cheap Swedish meatballs because we skipped the cafeteria and food section.

But I will always treasure the two tea towels we bought. “Design and quality IKEA of Sweden,” the tag on each item said though the towels were made in Bangladesh. It also noted, “100% cotton,” in 28 different languages. That language instruction and all the store signs in what I think was Swedish, with English translations, might be the real value of the IKEA experience.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 8:20 AM with the headline "Wally Spiers: IKEA is a gigantic place you could get lost in."