In the Swedish bargain basement

Xan and I brought my parents to Ikea for the first time today. My mother had been salivating over the catalog for the last couple days and the evil store is a mere 10 minutes from our house. We decided to go for the 99-cent breakfast and get there relatively early. Four hours later, we had traversed the whole store, with my mom getting umpteen ideas about what do with their new place, if only the new Detroit-area Ikea were open sooner than next year. (Indeed, it appears they are building one in Canton, about a half-hour away from Ann Arbor.)

I instructed them as to the usefulness of checking out the "As-Is" department, on the hunt for bargains that have minor scratches for a steal of a price. In particular, we have been looking for some furniture to put Angela's nine gazillion craft/yarn projects in the basement. We had finally narrowed it down to a couple Ikea pieces and something we found at Target. Since I've memorized the names, I knew what to look for "just in case" in Ikea.

And sure enough, we found a birch-colored Expedit shelving unit, the large one. Retailing for $149, it was dropped in As-Is down to $59. And the problem here was merely that the boxes were a little ripped up, while the furniture itself was fine. I called Ange and got permission to buy it.

"Guard this with your life," I told my mother, as I ran off to get the cart.

Even better, while I was distracted with Xan, I failed to realize that the cashier only rang it up for $50.

I think we had a good shopping day, myself.