Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I stopped reading after the author suggested that IKEA furniture be illegal.

I love IKEA. The furniture is designed to be really easy to put together; if you do something wrong, it simply doesn't fit. This shows that a lot of thought is put into each piece of furniture, and that makes me happy.

(Yes, sometimes I try to put something together incorrectly to make sure that I can't be misunderstanding the instructions. With cheap furniture, it will fit together fine and be wrong. With IKEA furniture, it becomes immediately obvious that you are doing it wrong. You simply can't continue until you do it right.)

Anyway, to me, IKEA furniture is kind of addictive. I love getting a box of particle board (+) and then, with just a little bit of instruction-following, having a solid piece of furniture. It's almost as fun as Lego! (I am almost disappointed when I am done putting it together. Yeah, now I have a functional piece of furniture that will make my life slightly more enjoyable. But ... putting it together was so fun, I'm upset that it's over.)

I also like how the styles and colors fit together, and how it is minimalist with just a touch of "design". I love IKEA.

(+) A lot of people whine about the quality. If you buy the super-cheap stuff, yeah, the quality is low. If you buy the mid-range or high-end stuff, though, the quality is great. There's a reason some of their furniture comes with a 25 year (!) warranty. They expect it to last for 25 years. From what I've seen, it does.

You can pry my allen wrench from my cold, dead hands.

I think you may have misread it. Megan McArdle more or less agrees with you because though she might not like Ikea furniture for herself she absolutely believes you should be able to buy cheap(er)/discount furniture and that it's good for everyone. McArdle's debating the author of Cheap (https://www.amazon.com/dp/159420215X) who believes otherwise.

I am saying that I like IKEA regardless of price. I think it's a place to get functional, well-designed, and pretty furniture. I like the design better than the "nice" stuff.

So "discount" doesn't factor into it.

25 years is not very long for furniture! I have several pieces in my apartment older than that -- made of real wood, full of character, and which I paid little or nothing for.

I've had IKEA stuff but I enjoy having furniture with history so much more. I recently acquired (for nothing) a huge, old wood desk that belonged to a CEO. There's a cabinet door on the side, out of which comes a mechanical shelf that I'm guessing was once used for a typewriter. Fascinating!

Given, it's hard to get ahold of the right furniture if you're not willing to pay much. But I've been slowly replacing my particle board with real wood, and spending less than I did on the fake stuff. It just takes time.

"I stopped reading after the author suggested that IKEA furniture be illegal."

Where exactly was that?

(Whether you like her or not, she's not someone who mistakes "I don't like it" for "It should be illegal".)

"Where exactly was that?"

As you point out in your book, Ikea furniture is not quite as adorably minimalist as its marketing implies. Making a whole bunch of disposable furniture places certain stresses on natural resources, not all of which are renewable, or, arguably, even legal.

The implication is that IKEA furniture is built from resources that are not legal (whatever that means), and is, as a result, itself not legal. I guess...

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