I went to Ikea for a plastic organiser and came home with a sofa

OK, I didn’t actually come home with the sofa: it’s getting delivered on Tuesday. They did make us take it through the register, along with all of the other random stuff I’d picked up on my journey around the store, though, which is why all of The Others in Ikea hate us now. (To be completely honest, we weren’t that keen on them either. Especially the not-particularly-small boy who jumped from the back of said sofa and landed on top of me. Ouch.)

Anyway, we may not have actually brought it home with us, but we totally DID go to Ikea today with the intention of spending £10 on one of their Godmorgon storage boxes for my makeup, and ended up spending quite a bit more than that on a new sofa instead. Whoops. This is why we try to limit our visits to Ikea. And all other stores.

In our defense, the sofa in question is one that we’ve had our eye on for absolutely ages now: in fact, it’s the very sofa we were planning on buying at some point in the future (You know, once we’d fixed up the kitchen, and the guest room, and our bedroom, and the garden, and painted all the walls, and bought a millionty-one other things for the house…), and it was in that “furniture graveyard” they have right next to the cash registers. You know, where they throw all of the broken stuff, and the ex-display models, and various other items that are so busted it’s a miracle they think they can sell them at all?

Terry didn’t even want to bother looking in The Graveyard.  “It’s always just a load of rubbish in there,” he said. “We’ve never once found something worth buying!” So he headed straight to the register with my dad (My parents had accompanied us on this trip: they’ll never pass up a visit to Ikea, and after the recent gnome-related incidents, we think it’s best to keep as close an eye on them as we can…), but the line was long, so my mum and I decided to pass the time with a quick look at some broken and completely useless things, so we headed to The Graveyard. I was a a few steps ahead, and when I saw the sofa appear through a gap in the crowd of Others, I thought I was hallucinating at first.

It was our sofa. The very one, in the very colour, and the very size we wanted. “Wow,” I thought, “there must be something seriously wrong with THAT for it to have ended up in the sale section!”

But there wasn’t. “NO WAY!” said my mum, when she caught up with me and caught sight of it, sitting there with a 50% discount sticker slapped on the side of it. “NO WAY!”

But it was true. We scoured every inch of it (dislodging a family of three, who had set up camp there, in the process. They had no intention of buying it: they just fancied a rest…), and only managed to identify two tiny marks on the leather, neither of which were hugely concerning to us. So I went and found Terry, who joined us in the examination, and announced that he reckoned both of the marks could easily be fixed/disguised. My dad was summoned, and confirmed this analysis. The four of us examined the sofa again, even going so far as to drag it out from the wall it was resting against, to make sure we weren’t missing anything. There was really nothing: it was in need of a bit of a clean, and there were those two little marks, but… it was half price. And it was the sofa we were planning to buy anyway.

“Yeah, we still can’t afford it,” said Terry. “We just came in for a storage box. Also, we have that whole issue with the hall floor probably having to be ripped up.”

(Oh yeah, did I mention our hall floor is probably going to have to be ripped up? Our hall floor is probably going to have to be ripped up. WHOLE other story. LONG, LONG STORY. Another time, people…)

“But it’s half price,” I pointed out. “And I’ve just found this cute cushion that would look really nice on it?”

In retrospect, that was really the wrong thing to say to Terry, because he kind of hates cushions. Mostly because he thinks I’m obsessed with them. He’s wrong about that, as it happens, but if buying a new cushion every few weeks is wrong, then I don’t even WANT to be right… Anyway, at this point the day was saved by my parents, who very generously stepped in and announced they’d been planning to contribute towards our planned sofa purchase anyway (They’re like that, my parents. They bring gnomes AND sofas. I KNOW: how lucky are we?!), and would not allow us to leave this one, and then spend twice as much on an identical version (albeit in a slightly better condition) in a few months time.

That’s how we came to find ourselves pushing a giant, L-shaped sofa through Ikea, and paying for it along with my Godmorgon storage tub, two glass jars and  a laptop tray. It’s also how I came to decide I now need a new TV cabinet, a coffee table, and possibly a rug. To go with the new sofa, obviously.

“Remember the hall floor is probably going to have to be ripped up,” said Terry. And yes: yes it is. And maybe a bit of the kitchen floor, too. Oh yeah, and one of the walls might have to come down. Like I said: LONG, LONG story. Which I will obviously be writing very soon (unless, of course, none of that actually has to happen. Because the story of how the floor almost got ripped up, but then didn’t, would be even MORE boring than the story of how it probably WILL have to get ripped up. Not that that’s ever stopped me before, mind you…), so stay tuned for that, and stock up on wine.

I DID get that cute cushion, though. Well, OF COURSE I did…

(P.S. I know what you’re thinking: cream leather sofa + Rubinman + Me = Disaster Waiting to Happen. It’s OK: our current sofas are the same colour, and they’re actually really easy to keep clean, so fingers crossed…)