When your IKEA purchase is bigger than expected...

So, my wife and I decided we needed to buy a new couch and bed frame. The couch we had been using was a hand-me-down, and our bed frame was just a basic frame with no headboard or footboard. Neither one really fit our rooms like we wanted them to. We started looking on IKEA’s website, and found a few ideas we liked. We then headed to IKEA, in my blue Honda Element, to have a look in person. We thought surely the Element will be big enough to hold anything we decide to buy!

When we got to IKEA, we fell in love with the Nockeby sectional, and the Hemnes bed frame. We decided to go ahead and purchase both of them so we could get them assembled in our home as quickly as possible. As we looked at these two items, we thought they both would fit in our car with no problem!

If you have never been to an IKEA store, you probably are unfamiliar with the purchasing process there. The bottom floor is where you actually pick up any big items you are buying. So, you do not really know how big the packaging is until you get down there. We went down, found our bed, and told one of the team members which sofa we wanted. We decided to go ahead and make our purchase while our sofa was being pulled from storage in the back because it was closing time for the store, and we wanted to get out so they could close up.

Our sofa was one of the last purchases they pulled out of the storage area for the night, and therefore we were two of the last people in the store. When the sofa came rolling out, we suddenly realized it was much bigger than we anticipated! It was arranged nicely on not one, but two of their biggest shopping carts.

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We rolled the carts down to the parking deck, optimistically hoping we could somehow manage to pack everything into my car. The Honda Element is a very versatile car, so surely we could figure out how to make it fit!

Looking at the boxes next to our car revealed how much bigger our purchase was than we had expected. A nice man offered to help us get it off our cart, and then just laughed when he saw what we were planning on packing it into!

We were confident we could somehow get it all to fit. Our plan of attack was made, and we began to unpack the boxes right there in the IKEA parking deck because we decided the contents would be easier to arrange outside of the big boxes.

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We still were not completely sure we could pack everything in our car. We did know we could not pack anything on top due to the fact that it was raining, and we had an hour and a half drive to get home.

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Slowly, but surely, we somehow managed to work the puzzle of IKEA furniture into the little box that is our car.

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Our seats were slid all the way forward, and my long legs were pressed up against the dash for the entire drive home Regardless of that, we both fit in the car along with our furniture!

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It was not the most comfortable journey, but we made it home! We made it through assembling our furniture, and finally had two nice places to relax and think about the epic IKEA Adventure we had just finished!