While this isn’t a proper ode to my favorite store which is IKEA, it a short post explaining my love for such a simple, yet beautiful store.

Jokes aside, I only usually get to set foot inside of an IKEA 3-4 times a year. The reason behind that is as simple as the closest location to us is Milwaukee, WI, which is still a 2 and a half hour drive from our home. But those 3 days a year I do get to go are some of the best days of the year.

The restaurant is usually my first stop. Since opening my business, I have become a member of the IKEA business network. With it I get a free drink from the restaurant and discounts on some obscure items. The free drink only seems to work sometimes, with my code not working the majority of the time and having to resort to grabbing a coffee, checking in with a staff member, and getting confirmation that I’m in the clear.

I don’t usually spend much in the store, which is a testament to my inability to spend money, which in context I guess is a good thing, but sometimes it does come back to bite me, like when I lost a domain name by waiting just a few minutes to long. But thats a story for another day.

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A large part of my family heritage is Swedish, and over the past few years I’ve been learning Swedish, researching the country, and even completing a few projects at school about Sweden and Scandinavian design as a whole. The style of design that many Nordic companies create is one of my favorites. The color yet simple esthetic has started to work its way into my design work, albite, not as well as the professional designers of companies like Teenage Engineering, ReMarkable, and of course, IKEA.

Someday I would consider moving to Norway or Sweden. Growing up in the state of Wisconsin, within the United States, I am already accustom to their weather and environment. But the mountains, valleys, and lakes of Scandinavia is something that you can’t really find in Wisconsin, or most of North America.