Plastic Makes It Possible!
So I’m moving. My lease on an apartment in the West End of Henrico County starts 27 December. (Need my contact info at the new place? Drop me a line.) It’ll be nice to get part of my day back, from cutting my 45-minute (each way) commute down to 10 minutes — even if I do spend most of that newly-available time sleeping. Given that my total furniture investment in Blacksburg consisted of a too-short twin bedframe, a half-size chest of drawers, a plastic shelving unit, a six-foot folding table and a K-Mart futon, it was time to go furniture shopping. I wasn’t too fond of the stuff I’d seen in various Richmond stores, so I went up to Ikea at Potomac Mills.
Result: two-and-a-half frustrating hours and one smoking credit card. When
the bill comes, my savings account will take a nasty hit.
Ikea sells their European image almost as hard as they sell their furniture. Unfortunately, I’d say the European-ness extends to their attitude toward customer service. The buying process is non-intuitive (to say the least), you have to pick most of the furniture off the warehouse rack yourself even if you’re having it delivered, and it takes forever to get anything done. You can’t just put together a list, go to a salesperson and say, “Let’s do this,” the way you might expect — you wind up with a small stack of paperwork before you even make it to the checkout lines, then you still have to deal with delivery (and those arrangements take another 20 minutes).
Fortunately, furniture buying is a one-time event and a one-time expense.
When you’re buying by yourself for an entire apartment, and you’d rather
not go ghetto like you did in college,
it becomes a huge one-time expense. The nice part, though, is that I
can make some of that cost up with the two months free rent I’m getting.
It seems that even outside college towns,
the rental cycle is partially driven by the end of the school year,
when people graduate and move on to new and exciting (or, in my case,
old and not-so-exciting) places. Conversely, winter is a dead time of the year for
rentals, so every complex in the West End seems to be offering at least
a month free as a sign-on bonus, and mine is offering two. Plus most of the big rental companies
have special discounts for large employers in the area… yeah, that
works. And, hey, electronics purchases will not be a problem. :)
But it is kind of disappointing to have to put off my Europe trip ideas (since I need to rehabilitate my savings account). I had hoped to brush off the high-school French for use in Paris, go to an English soccer game, then actually get to see more of London than the one rushed free day the Meistersingers 2001 tour allowed. But Ikea in Woodbridge, VA is as European as I’m gonna get until next fall at the earliest. (This is the part where you cue the world’s smallest record player, playing the world’s saddest song, just for me.) Ah well, I have a Jetta TDI made for lots of driving, it would be a shame to waste it. :) Perhaps a summer minor league baseball tour?
And, not to lose sight of the main goal, in three weeks I will have a completely functional apartment, with all the necessary furniture etc. This is a good thing. :)
17 December 2002 / 0 Comments / Tags: life