The Hunt

By: Beenish Khurshid, San Francisco, California

Some say adulting can be a roller coaster ride. This is a story about a mundane aspect of adulting: furniture shopping. Furniture shopping is supposed to be an experience in self expression. Once you have decided on the item you need, and decided on a budget, buying furniture should be about *you*. You pick the colour. You pick the size. You pick the style. You get to do you.

Furniture is IKEA. To anyone who is new to this adulting, yes, I repeat, furniture is IKEA. IKEA provides a nice soft landing space: low prices, big showrooms, and plenty of options to personalize. Best of all, it is designed to fit in your new and small adult life. And if you can’t find anything, at least you get frozen yogurt or a plate of amazing swedish GRÖNSAKSKAKA (vegetable medallion), SJÖRAPPORT (salmon filet) and a drink of DRYCK FLÄDER (elderflower drink) on the side. I can’t pronounce it, but I WILL eat it.

Furniture is Competitive.

“No, no it isn’t”, you say. “Have you seen a showroom? There are so many options! So much stock. Heck, you can order online. Pre-order even.”

That is, my friend, where you are sadly wrong. It is a brave new world out there. We just haven’t been out in a while.

So here is a story. 2 years into adulting, my husband and I decided it was time. Time to buy a dresser (aka chest of drawers). Sort of a 2 year anniversary present to ourselves. Like any adulting millennial, the first thing we did was our research. Online, we found a wide variety of options, but only one that fit our criteria, our aesthetic and style, and comfort zone: the HEMNES from IKEA - a beauty of a 6 drawer dresser - brown-black, from sustainably sourced solid eucalyptus wood, with his and hers mini-drawers at the top. Enough to fit all our things. At a good price.

So we hit order, and proceeded to check-out. But lo and behold, not in stock - not available for delivery. That’s strange, we thought. We’ll just drive and pick-up in-store. But no, not in stock. Okay, we'll go a bit further to another location.

Not in stock.

Not in stock anywhere within a 500 mile radius. Yes, that is right. We were desperate enough to drive all the way to Las Vegas to get that dresser. But no luck. Not even the dazzling (albeit somewhat haram) Las Vegas could hold onto a few HEMNES 6-drawer chests for us.

So we did the next smartest thing an adulting millennial could do. We waited. A month later, we checked again. It is bound to be in stock now right? Right? No such luck was found to our dismay. Not in stock anywhere within that beauty of a 500 mile radius. So we looked around at non-Ikea stores, but none fit the large size, solid wood, black, at a good price criteria that the HEMNES had us drooling over.

Then came our big break. A coworker of mine announced on Slack that she was selling off her furniture. It would be second hand, but hey, maybe this might be our shot at a dresser. We needed to stop living out of our suitcases afterall. So I got over the awkwardness, and sent her a PM. Did she have a dresser for sale? No. Did she know about the Ikea HEMNES? YES! Not only did she herself own an IKEA dresser herself (that she was not willing to give up), those in her social network had been eyeing, and struggling after, the same brown-gold - on the hunt for an IKEA dresser that seemed to never be in stock.

So, it turns out, this is a “thing”. We are not alone! Out of stock IKEA furniture must be affecting tens of hundreds of millennials looking to upgrade their furniture situation in the Bay Area, maybe in the world. Why is this not a news story?? This is such a big deal, that it is worth writing an article about, to let the world know about the suffering this shortage is causing! Oh wait right - there are bigger things happening in the world right now than me and my 1st world problems.

But a humour article for the NorthWest Muslim Magazine will do nicely. Yes, yes that will work nicely.

Have we found our dresser? No. Are we checking the IKEA website daily? Yes, yes we are.

Who knew adulting could be so interesting?

P.S. After 6 months of waiting, we landed our dresser. Hurray! :D

Photo by Stephanie Harvey on Unsplash