Ikea Trip

Trips to Ikea always require advanced planning for me.  After all, it's a big place and a big deal just to get down to Schaumburg on any given day.  Bailee worked it out where she could come along without the girls. We would need the room in the truck to haul back our purchases and two car seats take up way too much space. 

We started our trip the same way as always. We headed to the third floor to work our way from the top down.  On past trips, we averages one hour per floor.  But here we were two hours into our visit and we were still on the third floor.  Bailee was going through her list to make sure she didn't miss a thing. I finally sat on a bench and waited for her to go back and pick up a few things missed from her list. 

We got to the second floor and decided to go through the children's section last.  It was the highlight to the visit so we wanted to save the best for last. We started with one cart we shared and had to split our things into two separate carts.  That was a little scary since we didn't even get to the first floor yet where you pick up all the big boxes. 

No matter how many times I go to Ikea I never get tired of the shopping cart escalators. They are so fun to watch. 

On the first floor, we had to pick up all the furniture we wanted from the second and third floors. We decided to pay for our carts full of stuff first.  That way we could push a cart around easier and know how much cash we already spent.

One of the items Bailee wanted, a television stand was in the discounted section of the first floor.  These are returned items sold "as is" much cheaper than the cost of new.  So we loaded it on our cart but I worried about how much room we had in the car. Once we got all our purchases, we had to unload the car and start with the big things first.  We put the television stand in, then the kitchen table and chairs, followed by the hutch and drawer unit we bought.  The we loaded the kid's kitchen, table and chairs and the coffee table to be used for Chloe's doll house. We had to fill in the cracks with the smaller purchases and Bailee had to ride with a bag full at her feet.  There was so much stuff I couldn't see out the rear view mirror. Luckily, we had an easy ride home without much traffic.  I still cannot believe we got all that stuff in my car!