7 Reasons

Tag: Ikea

  • 7 Reasons That the IKEA Plastis is the Ultimate Washing-Up Brush

    7 Reasons That the IKEA Plastis is the Ultimate Washing-Up Brush

    The IKEA Plastis is amazing.  It’s truly a thing of wonder.  Here are seven reasons that it’s the ultimate washing-up brush.

    IKEA Plastis washing up brushes in red, yellow and blue

    1.  It Creates Envy.  The IKEA Plastis washing-up brush is capable of provoking great envy.  I first saw one in a friend’s kitchen four years ago and, ignoring all of the more expensive and conventionally desirable objects that surrounded it (almost the entire Le Creuset range of pots and pans, a very swanky digital radio, a fully-tiled kitchen floor), I made a beeline straight for it.  “This is amazing!”, I exclaimed, as I picked it up, wide-eyed, to examine it.  “It’s a washing-up brush”, my friend replied, helpfully.  “Yes, I can see that”, I said, “but it’s got a sucker on the bottom.  It’s ingenious*.”  And that was it.  I had fallen in love with the simplicity and brilliance of the design.  I wanted that washing-up brush more than I want a cat that can talk or the ability to levitate (which I would use mostly to surprise people in first-floor rooms).  I had to have one.

    2.  It Creates Anticipation.  “It’s from IKEA”, my friend said.  “What!  NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” was my rational and measured response during which I adopted a posture worthy of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but in a well-appointed Bolton kitchen.  This may seem like an overreaction to the prospect of purchasing something from IKEA, but it really isn’t.  Had the Plastis been available solely from the moon it would have been easier to get hold of.  I live in the centre of a city.  Because of this I choose not to own a car.  This is because I live in the bit that most people drive to and I have no desire to visit the suburbs/industrial estates/retail parks/Frankie and Benny’s so I don’t need one.  Public transport is also not a practical option when it comes to visiting our local IKEA and the Plastis isn’t available to order online (I checked.  Weekly), so I had to wait four years until we required a sufficient quantity of shelving, lampshades, sideboards and other stuff in order to justify renting a car to get the Plastis.  During that time I tried not to think of the brush every day**, but I thought about it a lot.  They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and, in the years that the brush was absent from my life, I grew very fond of it indeed.  Perhaps too fond.

    An IKEA Plastis washing-up brush in red
    I stopped short of getting a tattoo of the Plastis.

    3.  It Makes Grown Men Jump For Joy.  “There it is!  There it is!” I exclaimed breathlessly to my wife while pointing to a display on the other side of a very large room in IKEA, before abandoning her and hurrying toward the stand of brushes.  And there it was.  Or, more excitingly, they were.  There were loads of them, in several colours, standing upright in serried ranks on their suckers.  There was an army of them.  This is what it must be like to be The Queen during the trooping of the colour, I thought.  After four, long years, I was finally about to get hold of a Plastis!.  Obviously, I studied them all very carefully before selecting one and, while my wife was away playing with wardrobes, tape measures and shelving, I made my important decision.  Though it wasn’t a very difficult one because…

    4.  The Plastis Comes In Red.  This is important.  As one of the rules of our kitchen (immediately after the rule that every time I paint the ceiling, something else will spring a leak and ruin it again) is that nothing goes in there unless it’s red.  We have red pots, red pans, red blenders, red mug-stands, red radios, red everything.  Josef Stalin and Ken Livingstone would get into our kitchen: Winston Churchill and Joseph McCarthy would not.  Unless they’re any good at laying floor tiles (red), in which case, they’d be very welcome.

    5.  It’s Great Value.  The IKEA Plastis is fantastic value priced, as it is, at £1.11.  Not only does this mean that you can buy joy and fulfilment for less than the price of a cup of coffee, but – with its preponderance of 1s – should you wish to print this page out, it will be cheaper to do so as the number 1 uses less ink than any other number.  Also, should you be near a superstitious type at this moment, the three ones will be causing them to say “Nelson!” and dance around, meaning that you get free entertainment too.  Obviously, in our case, the fantastic value was slightly offset by having to buy a sideboard and rent a car to get one, but it’s still better value than paying council tax, which costs many times more and doesn’t make anyone happy.

    6.  It’s Even Better Value For Dishwasher-Owners.  Because, as the people at IKEA will tell you, the Plastis is dishwasher-safe.  Which means that you can wash your washing-up brush inside the dishwasher, which is great, because otherwise, if we didn’t have a dishwasher, we’d have to buy another washing-up brush to wash our washing-up brush with.  So for dishwasher-owners, the cost of washing-up brush ownership is halved.***

    7.  It’s Got A Sucker.  Obviously the best bit about the Plastis is the sucker, and since we got ours home I’ve been experimenting with it.  I’ve stood it up on the draining board, I’ve stuck it to the wall, I’ve affixed it to the (red) biscuit tin and, best of all, I’ve stuck it to my forehead and chased the cat around the house pretending to be an alien (consequently, for the past two days I’ve had a large purple circle in the centre of my forehead which doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon).  There is literally nothing that can’t be improved by sticking a Plastis to it.  Even people.  The Plastis is awesome and one day, who knows, I might even use it to wash something up.

    *I promise you, our conversations are usually far more interesting than this.

    **Because that would be weird.

    ***Yes, I did use this argument in IKEA to justify purchasing the Plastis to my wife, who responded by using a technique that she has developed during our marriage called Smile & Nod.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Shop At Ikea

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Shop At Ikea

    Another Saturday comes by and with it another chance for Marc and I to get up from the sofa and stretch our legs. I am stretching them quite far today. From Fulham to some place in Kent. I’m moving you understand. But that’s enough about me, let’s focus on the issue in hand. Today’s 7 Reasons piece comes from regular 7 Reasons contributor, Simon Best. Who, when he’s not writing for us – or shopping in Ikea – can be found writing on twitter. He also does some other things that no one quite understands.

    7 Reasons To Shop At Ikea

    1.  Names. Everything they sell at Ikea from the largest kitchen unit to the smallest tealight has a name, the vast majority with a Scandinavian touch, some with more imagination than others: the ‘Dimma’ lamp, the ‘Pyra’ wok, the ‘Slitbar’ knife. I doubt that ‘Slitbar’ is actually the Swedish for knife but it is not beyond the realms of possibility. The names are also the answer to parents who don’t want to name their offspring Apple or Chardonnay – Knubbig, Gnistra and Ivar offer perfect alternatives – it’s only fair after Ikea stole the name ‘Billy’ for their best selling item – it is now more widely associated with a bookcase than a boy.

    2.  Showrooms. Much of the space in Ikea is taken up with showrooms displaying Ikea furniture in various combinations: kitchens, bedrooms, offices, living rooms. They’re often given a lived in look which reassures you that it is not just you that left your bed unmade and a pile of washing up in the sink. They also show you how the furniture you buy will never look in your house, after all if they lose bolt E or joint B then there is a shop full of them, then there is a shop full of them.

    3.  Pencils. Everywhere you look in Ikea there are little wooden pencils. They’re handy for writing down measurements or noting down the location of things you want to buy. They’re also perfect for sticking behind your ear which is essential for making you look as if you are competent at DIY. The reality is that most men walking round Ikea with a pencil behind their ear are there because their wives have sent them out of the house while a professional comes round to fix the damage that they did the previous weekend with their drill. The preponderance of pencils in Ikea is mirrored by one in my house. I don’t buy pencils any more, I just go to Ikea, stick one behind each ear and forget they are there until I get home.

    4. Lack of piped music. One of the things I hate about going shopping is the musak that pervades high street stores and shopping malls. When I go to the supermarket I don’t want to listen to THIS [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oofSnsGkops] I want to listen to Test Match Special so that I can hear England slump from a respectable 70 for none (by the cheese counter) to a disastrous 104 for 5 (while I’m deciding whether to buy Braeburns or Granny Smiths). Ikea has no music, which is a relief because I don’t think the world could cope with a cover of Waterloo or Super-Trouper played on Guatemalan panpipes.

    5. A masterclass in bad parenting. Most of the people shopping in Ikea are families. People go at the weekend and take their children. Now Ikea stores are big but they’re not a park or an adventure playground.Children spend most of their week in pre-fab buildings with bright furniture and at the weekend they should be outside playing football or building treehouses or riding their choppers (oh, sorry I forget it wasn’t 1985 anymore). When children are taken to ikea they get bored – which is understandable as the only interest they have in furniture is its capacity to be adapted to a pirate ship or be used to shut their younger sister in. As a result parents get angry and shout. Go to Ikea on a weekend and you will observe a masterclass in bad parenting.

    6.  Trolleys. When you enter Ikea you’ll see normal shopping trolleys by the door. My advice is to leave them where they are. When you get to the warehouse where all the furniture is stacked you’ll find much more exciting flat-bed trolleys. While you are looking for Aisle 4 Section 17 to pick up your table they make excellent scooters – that is until you collide with a large woman carrying four pot plants and a selection of candles. You might even find the bored children following your example. Something that their parents will doubtless thank you for.

    7.  Meatballs. Quite possibly the best thing about Ikea is the restaurant – and specifically the meatballs with lingonberries Where else can you find delicious international cuisine for astoundingly good value. People go to Ikea at dinner time just to have some meatballs with the furniture being a side attraction.* You can even take some meatballs home with you to microwave which is a good thing as there is no way you’re going to have that kitchen unit assembled and be able to cook dinner in the space of a day.