How to keep sane while shopping at Ikea

Now that you’ve moved into your Tandem apartment (either in Davis or Woodland), now you’ve got to furnish it. A quick trip down 80 to West Sacramento’s Ikea will furnish you with everything you need, except your sanity. To keep sane on your trip throught Ikea maze, Kerry over at Squawkfox offers the following tips:

1. Measure thrice. Freak out once.

Before stepping outside your home, do yourself a solid and measure everythingyour prospective IKEA furniture is supposed to touch. Measure wall height, floor space, doorway girth, and the length of your dog’s tail. Heck, measure everything three times (using both imperial and metric systems) just to be certain your new PAX unit won’t graze the ceiling when fully erect. True story.

Swedish Translation: A happy guy with a pencil will draw an ‘X’ over you.

If you’re in IKEA and some ‘Swedish Bedroom Specialist’ hands you a paper ruler to see if that sexy SULTAN mattress fits in your 300 square foot micronized Vancouver apartment, forget it — you’re already f-cked.

Measure ahead of time, and you won’t face the hell of re-flatpacking a partially assembled bed frame ’cause it just don’t fit. True story.

2. Enter without a list, die a slow death.

You will totally ignore this essential tip. I know this because it took me no less than 25 IKEA trips before I grew a Swedish brain, used the IKEA website, and created the perfect IKEA shopping list online. You’ll stay on budget, avoid getting lost in picking zones, and know when your child’s SNIGLAR is in stock.

Listed: IKEA product name on the left. Stock aisle on the right. Win.

The IKEA shopping list feature — appropriately named (in English) My Shopping List — is free to those who care about avoiding dehydration and mental breakdowns. Sort by Position in self service area and you won’t die a slow death searching for the second (and third) boxes that will eventually build your BRIMNES wardrobe.

There are 10 more great and funny tips to go, read the whole thing here.