IKEA to buy back used furniture in recycling push
bbc.com
bbc.com
I think these tips can go a long way:
- use proper tools instead of the cheap tools that come with the product
- if you use a power tool on a screw, only use it for 95% of the task. finish the job with a hand-tool or you will do damage.
- do not over-tighten things which screw into wood
- metal into metal? LOCTITE.
- you're really not going to disassemble that coffee table or small check of draws, so just use a bit of wood glue
The great think about most IKEA furniture (or more generally, wood furniture) is that you can modify/fix it when it breaks. Good luck fixing those broken welds on your metal chairs!
(1): Okay so my Lack coffee table fell apart, but it's also ~£5. I repaired it with wood-glue and masking tape, good as new, then gave it away for free on FreeCycle.
Maybe we will be able to recycle it. That would be pretty nice.
I've assembled loads of IKEA furniture over the years and have only rarely had quality issues. IKEA uses a lot more solid wood these days than compressed particle board, and is thus not bad.
The only issue I've seen (which IKEA has attempted to remedy in its more recent iterations) is that the bottoms of some of the drawers in a chest of drawers will "bow" down under load.
I've had mass-produced furniture from major brands known for quality, I've had hand-made wood furniture from NC, I've had big-box store self-assembled furniture and I've had IKEA furniture. Hand-made furniture can't be beat, but IKEA really is second best in my experience.
A lot of other factory made furniture is built starting from some vestige of traditional joinery, and then cheapened until it hits a price point. The construction is appalling. I don't expect mortise and tenon face frames, but pocket screws would be a much better solution than a couple of pneumatic nails, which do nothing to stabilize the case and can't be driven back in when they pull out under racking forces. At that point, the whole frame has to come off, and since the rest of the piece is as cheaply built, it's anybody's guess whether it'll hold together long enough to put the face frame back on.
The thinness of veneers on the tops of things that look like solid wood is a crime too. Most pros do the bulk of their stripping chemically, which doesn't risk damaging the veneer, but you usually have to do at least a little sanding, and it doesn't take much to find out what lies beneath. The result is that you can refinish a piece once.
Just like in software (which was my first career), doing repair/maintenance can be a real eye-opener.
If you like the look of IKEA, it's generally a good compromise between cost and durability.
EDIT: I should probably add that, in fairness, IKEA stuff , at least the particleboard or honeycomb cardboard stuff, is completely unrefinishable. I haven't seen any of their solid wood stuff come in for repair, but I'd take my chances on that if somebody wanted to pay me to.
I don't know what you're talking about... all the "classic" IKEA items like the BILLY bookshelf, the KALLAX (now EXPEDIT) shelves, the LACK table, the MALM chests... they're all particle board and, yes, bad quality. (Which is OK since they're cheap, that's the whole point.)
Yes you've always also been able to buy solid wood stuff, like certain tables and chairs or more expensive items, but that stuff isn't replacing the classic particle-board pieces. It's not like IKEA's been moving to higher-quality stuff on the whole.
(Source: I just bought a whole bunch of cube-shelving from IKEA - Kallax is all over, but Expedit is nowhere to be found.)
That's not true. The Billy line is a mix of particleboard and a MDF backboard/diaphragm, but the Kalax/Lack lines are composite panels built from fiberboard, plywood, and a cardboard cell core. And they are superb, specially given their price and also weight.
Sadly nothing can help with the problem of MDF getting chipped and gouged easily when you move house.
Good luck breaking the steel beam bed frame :)
Ikea furniture is not wood it's crap particleboards, cheap plastic, etc. - repairing that looks terrible. Their paint quality is crap as well - I bought a work desk that would scratch from moving a monitor on it and has wear marks from resting my hands. Same problem with kitchen table in a rental apartment - got scratched up from regular use and no way to repair it. Hinges on sliding doors would never stop correctly and scratch up the other door, loose/flimsy feeling mechanism in the first place.
I do have their standing desk - it fit the home office space perfectly and it was the only good delivery option during corona lockdown - I'm happy with that so far. In general IKEA is my least favourite furniture option but sometimes they are the most practical solution.
My kitchen table is from Ikea, it's solid wood. My Poang chair from Ikea came with a 10 year guarantee and I expect it to last longer than that. This idea that everything that comes out of Ikea is barely going to make it home is nonsense.
Of course if you buy a side table for £6 then you can't expect it to last long. That isn't representative of the whole though.
IKEA is like McDonald's of furniture, there's a place for it, but like the McDonald's fancy burger options if you're going for that you'll have significantly better options for a bit more money
Only if you value your time at 0. If you value your time at more than that, the time it takes to get a contractor and back and forth with him to agree on a design etc makes it more expensive, since with Ikea you pretty much opt into a generic solution of one-size-fits-all.
I agree it's not for everyone; though I wouldn't say it's the McDonalds of furniture – this would IMO be Poco (https://www.poco.de/); also I'm saying that as someone who doesn't eat McDonalds :-D
Depends a lot on the line. Eventually one figures it out.
I love the Hemnes line for example: the design suits my tastes and it's all 100% wood – from the smell of it I guess pine.
Regarding the paint job, that can be the case, though I wouldn't know as I normally get them in raw wood. Sometimes I overpaint them myself with a different color.
There are different tiers of furniture at IKEA. Cheap lines made of particle board. More pricey ones made of good quality solid wood. Middle priced stuff that's somewhere in between.
Depends entirely on the quality of the welds!
An old rented flat had metal dining chairs. Eventually the welds on the back rests broke and they started popping off. Nothing I can do about that, as much as I would like an excuse to buy a tig welder...
My parents have wooden furniture which has been in the family for 100+ years and repaired many times.
And I'm working on a desk that I picked up 15 years ago and it's still in great condition even after daily use.
With IKEA you get what you pay for. If you want quality IKEA furniture, you can get it. But it won't be that cheap.
(The torque setting is the numbered collar behind the chuck on your driver, if it has one. It won't be calibrated to anything, but lower numbers mean less torque applied to the fastener before the driver stops turning it.)
A low torque setting vastly reduces the hazard of splitting the MDF, or chewing up the bolt's drive socket, if you're a little careless on the trigger. Then you can hand-finish with a regular driver.
I'd hesitate to use a thread locker on Ikea bolts. They're cheaply made and very mild, so it's hard enough to get them out without stripping the drive as it is; there's no way you're going to break Loctite and not end up needing to grab a bolt head with vise grips. (And that's if you break the Loctite before the drive strips. I wouldn't count on that.) At most, I'd say wait until you know there's a problem with a fastener backing out before you start thinking about gooping it up with something, and even then probably start with something less aggressive than even blue Loctite - a tiny dab of superglue, maybe.
Or, learn how to use the torque setting properly on your electric drill / screwdriver.
Ikea, perhaps unsurprisingly, sells a cheap cordless driver ($20 US) with a torque limiter.
Perhaps this is unusual in the US but entry-level corded drills are readily available in the UK.
I don't know if this store is a good example, but this USA based store appears to stock a range of cheap corded drills:
https://www.lowes.com/pl/Drills-Drills-drivers-Power-tools-T...
I wonder if corded drills might be more common in the UK because your higher mains voltage means less current is required for a given power output. With conversion losses, you can't realistically pull more than a horsepower out of a typical 120V/10A circuit without risking a breaker trip, even if there's nothing else connected to the circuit. That makes a corded tool potentially much more of a pain to use than a battery-powered one, so even if the corded version would otherwise be much more cost-efficient, it still may be a tougher sell in the US.
I've heard the same power limitation described as a reason why electric kettles basically don't exist here, although since kitchen circuits are typically rated for higher current than most others, I suspect the absence of good electric kettles may have more to do with steeped tea having been displaced by drip coffee in Americans' morning cups.
I never realised that, but it makes sense. Canadians don't use electric kettles either and they like their tea! When I lived in Canada everyone seemed to have a stovetop whistling kettle.
Looking at my Australian-designed Chinese-built UK kettle, it's rated at "2760-3000W", which is far more than can be drawn from a standard US 120V outlet.
I wonder if that's also why I've seen almost no electric/induction cooktops in American media even though from my Central European POV induction tops are safer, easier to regulate etc. than gas cooktops.
As for not seeing them in the media, that is likely because electric cooktops don't make for good video. The pop of a nice blue flame is much more interesting. Additionally, most high end kitchen appliances are gas since gas is preferred by most professional kitchens.
A typical 120V circuit in the US is either 15A or 20A. Where are you finding 10A circuits?
You can get enough torque to break your wrist with 10 amps at 120v.
It gave me some idea of what things were worth at the pawn shop.
If you use a sledgehammer instead of a screwdriver, don't complain about furniture falling apart.
That's more a function of battery-powered drills being good enough and the stuff that requires a plug is designed to drill through concrete. My cordless Milwaukee has pressure-sensitive speed and a very granular torque setting, along with hammer drill and screw settings. My Ikea furniture is basically bulletproof.
Everyone should have a basic toolbox that includes a cordless drill.
Corded drills are just _drills_. Cordless drills are typically drill / drivers.
Much like electrical circuits, it's not really that useful to have a limiter when you don't know what to limit it to.
Instead you start low and increase the setting one click at a time until the screw is seated properly, then use that setting for the rest of the screws.
Simultaneously weak, heavy and extremely vulnerable to water damage, it's only advantage is that it's dimensionally accurate when new and amenable to automated cutting, milling and drilling at the factory. I guess it's good with laminate coatings as well.
Another thing about IKEA is that if you got an old house with wide baseboards and not-quite-square walls, floors and ceilings, it's hard to make stuff like cabinets, bookshelves and counters mount properly. IKEA appears to be optimized for modern construction.
Much better to just get high-quality plywood cabinets, you won't have to worry about destroying it by using normal tools. It's also lighter and you will swear less and be done sooner. Even better, hire a carpenter to install good stuff.
Realistically, for people that move around a lot having a very cheap option to fit each living space is just efficient. Particleboard is effectively a form of wood recycling so using it is surprisingly environmentally friendly even if doesn’t last very long. However, once you buy a place it’s time to get something that lasts.
If you disassemble it, it immediately starts feeling like you got what you paid for.
I wouldn't blame IKEA specifically, any chipboard furniture would be prone to this.
Almost all of it is MDF, not chipboard/particleboard.
Perhaps the epitome of Ikea's engineered lumber prowess is either their Kalax line or their Lack tables, which are built from fiberboard blocks held together by a plywood diaphragm and with a celular cardboard core.
They sell lots of both. If you're buying a $10 coffee table, yes, it's going to be particle board.
I feel like people are missing the core of ikea: it's well priced, stylish furniture that you can move into your condo or apartment easily.
So some IKEA stuff is well priced, some isn't. Some is great value for the money, some definitely isn't. Some styles are plain ugly as fk to us, some they nail pretty well for the price. I think its called hit-and-miss situation.
Their kitchens are great value generally - not top notch by any means, but at given price even professionals tend to agree they are the best. If you want something better, prepare 2-3x the price. And since you never move kitchen, most complains mentioned before don't apply.
That was the 4th move, where I had disassembled and reassembled it each time. One of those moves was across the country too.
That said, a benefit to the lack(heh) of quality is how light everything is. I do a lot of projects that require using my entire living space. If it wasn't so easy to just shove the furniture out of the way, I'd have that much more inertia between me and doing what I want.
The issue is mainly when moving between apartments/houses. All the shifting weight and jostling in the truck simply weakens things too much. It's also not meant to be disassembled, and the particle board easily gets really banged up because it's so soft. And all this is even when trying to protect it with covering pads. (And sadly, none of your tips are going to help either -- fasteners simply pull themselves out of the soft particle board, because the board itself is weaker than the fastener/glue.)
A Billy bookshelf or Kallax shelving unit will hopefully survive a single move, especially if you can tighten/glue things further after it's been moved. But once you're talking 2-3 moves, forget it.
For that reason, for young professionals who move apartments every couple years in their 20's, it often makes more sense to just leave/toss their IKEA shelves/cubbies/units, and buy new pieces for the new place. It isn't durable across moves.
(Obviously I'm talking about "classic" IKEA particle board flat-pack stuff. If you're buying a solid wood table or metal lamp from IKEA then it'll be fine, but that's not what most people are thinking about when they think of IKEA furniture.)
A lot of IKEA stuff I've bought involves one-way assembly -- pounding things together with a mallet. See the EKET cabinets for example. If you reverse it by naively prying them apart, it'll strip the wood.
Or take the backing to any BILLY bookshelf -- it's held in place with ~30 tiny nails. It's virtually impossible to pry the backing and nails off without destroying the backing in the process.
Etc. etc. Yes, some of the pieces can be disassembled, if the assembly consists entirely of cam locks, dowels and screws. But it's certainly not designed for it.
Anecdotally, I just moved apparently. The the last two years my Malm bed was fantastic. Never made a noise no matter what I did on the bed. I could lay, kneel, have my dog run zoomies on it, and it was great. Then I took it apart to move apartments and you would have thought a banshee lived in the joints. Sitting, touching, it didnt matter that thing howled. We tried a few online solutions before doing the ultimate solution: buying a new frame.
> fasteners simply pull themselves out of the soft particle board, because the board itself is weaker than the fastener
This is true for most furniture. High-quality solid wood is also weaker than a metal fastener.
I do have a couple of short shelves that I got used and moved 3-4 times that look to be screwed into the material (my memory isn't that great :/) and I'm guessing at one point had a nailed on back. I'm fairly sure it just worked for me to disassemble and reassemble without change and they are somehow stable without any cross bracing. The previous owner might have changed the screws.
I also have a pair of IKEA chairs that were quite unstable when I got them used and the issue turned out to be that the order of tightening screws made a huge difference. Luckily it was new enough that it was easy to find the manual on IKEA's site or I would never have figured it out. I think a number of items have tricks like that where you need to exactly follow the instructions or it doesn't work.
I tried removing the nails and it’s impossible. They’re very very very snug. Even punching the backplane out just breaks it and leaves the nails in place with a little piece of board around them. There isn’t enough space between the nail head and the board to slide a kitchen knife and when there is, is breaks the knive’s edge rather than moving the nail.
Very curious indeed to know what your method is.
What I guess I'm trying to say is that it's not IKEA problem, it's budget lines of IKEA products problem. At the lower price range it's hard to expect great durability.
A lot of wooden IKEA furniture sold in Europe is produced in Poland and there are many local knock-offs of IKEA products from other manufacturers. These are either cheaper and even less durable or more expensive but barely match IKEA's ease of assembly and quality of the components. I really don't think that durability is IKEA's greatest problem. ;)
Came here to say just that. Some products are virtually bullet-proof, while others start to show their age after a few months of regular use. For example, cheap melltorp tables can withstand a nuclear blast and even a few cross-country relocations, but anything from their Billy line is already half-way to a trash heap after unboxing. IMMV.
Anecdotal but we have several (Expedit, the old Kallax) and they have survived 4 moves, one quite a distance and they are used daily to hold media and in a living room, one was part of my desk for 4 years. They are still in great condition. I expected 2 years out of them and am coming up on 10.
The only exception was one poorly designed under-the-bed drawer (the front gradually falls off due to the impacts if you kick it closed).
I'm reminded of the idea of "mechanic's feel" from "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. It's when you develop a sense for tightening a screw or bolt for snugness without destroying the threads, the head or the material. It's hard to do that with an electric driver in the way. (one exception might be the gyro drivers)
And with respect to wood glue - I think it's worth the effort to add it to the mix with the non-metal furniture. Not only does it make the furniture more solid feeling, it also helps prevent the screws from loosening.
Speak for yourself. I just finished a long distance move, and I absolutely took all of my Ikea furniture apart.
I'm on about year 3 of my current set of Ikea furniture, and so far it's all holding up fine. I pretty much just followed the directions, and used a power drill (with appropriate torque settings) for pretty much everything.
It seems very plausible to me that there was plenty of crappy (probably homemade) furniture that wasn't any better than Ikea historically. Heirloom quality furniture takes real skill, time and materials to make. I can't imagine that the average pre-Ikea family would have been able to afford for all of their furniture to be of that quality. Not being any kind of historian, I have no idea how they filled that gap.
The problem is that people by and large don't want solid and reliable. They want a wardrobe with a full-size mirror and soft close drawers, not grandma's hand-me-down mahogany wardrobe that's built like a brick shihouse.
This thread is also full of people complaining about IKEA products not holding up to moves, but I bet most of them would change their tune if they had to move a house full of solid wood furniture.
That stuff is heavy. You can buy an old wardrobe that will barely dent when hit with a sledgehammer, but the labor cost of moving it is so high that it can be cheaper nowadays to scrap it and buy a new one from IKEA.
Seriously it’s worth the added cost. You’ll all love it.
However, even their crap can be really rugged. I have this $5 side table that I've been dragging around for a decade now that just won't die.
- the cheapest possible one at like $5 - a pretty OK one at $20 - some really fancy ones with brass handles or sth at $40 or $80
The $5 products I bought fell apart, but the $20 ones are still perfectly fine.
So I guess depending on what everyone refers to as "typical IKEA stuff", their mileage might vary by a looong shot.
I don't know, is that a crazy, overly-activist idea?
https://www.btod.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ikea-id...
Was cheap as hell and supported heavy books and CRT TV for thirty years. The durability being too low wasn't the problem.
Maybe if you're in a refurbished hundred year old house and it deserves some dignified antiques sure, but for the rest of us IKEA is just fine. We even have a 15 year old very cheap Lack table in the corner.
Over the last 15years I have bought (and sold on) a lot of 2nd hand IKEA furniture. (In fact looking at my house now, I can only see 2 or 3 items that were bought new and the rest are 2nd hand and in excellent condition. There is a very very active market.
My daughter's toddler size bed was bought 2nd hand and moved on to the next parent still in remarkably good condition after she wouldn't fit in the bed anymore.
I think this is more of a classic "kill the 2nd hand marked" move.
An honest ad would be scripted as follows: "Tired of your yellow lamp? Buy a shiny new blue one and get rid of the yellow one without feeling guilty."
So usually you are replacing IKEA with something that is not IKEA.
People who can't afford to upgrade from IKEA also don't waste money changing lamp colours.
Ikea are an interesting company with a strong reputation to look after. I suspect you are being slightly too cynical.
I guess it's easier to do good without shareholders.
I wonder if it's related to signalling in some way. I'm not a Dutchie myself, but they're infamous for looking down on showing off with money.
I did get some good second hand stuff on carousel. Scooter, baby chair, laptop. All super cheap though. My 3.5 year old mbp 13 cost me less than USD$800. Brand new battery and top case too. You'd never get that in Berlin where I am now but you will find an unending wealth of good secondhand products for sale. Stuff left on the footpath is gone almost immediately too.
I'm more optimistic about motivations. Most people don't have time to sell (or even give away) something they bought for $200 now worth $30 on the second-hand market. If I could dispose of this stuff safely, freely, and easily, I definitely would.
Heck, if Ikea keeps this up, I bet there will be a third-hand market where people haul this junk away to Ikea, and resell vouchers/new furniture. That'd be awesome. If I could dump this stuff on the curb, and know it won't end up in a landfill, I'd totally do it.
That already seems to be a thing - at least at the Seattle IKEA. Whenever I return something I spot at least one "pro" who has 3 or 4 of the same mismatched piece to return. It obviously works for them to salvage items off craigslist and yard sales and return them for store credit.
I've gone through this with a few things recently but I don't live in a city. I do, however, live on a fairly busy country road and I've had pretty good luck leaving things at the end of my driveway with a big FREE sign on them :-)
"Great value for the price" isn't the same as "sturdy," though. I don't have anything from Ikea which I would describe as "made very well," and I'm under no illusions that it will outlast me, like my proper furniture.
I've never had a serious problem with anything from them. The same cannot be said most of the furniture we've gotten from other places. The expensive, fancy-shmancy reclaimed wood dresser and nightstand my wife bought from some other chic retailer has been repaired about 4000 times.
even with the cheapest stuff, I find a little care goes a long way. my cheap ikea bed frame has been moved and reassembled twice now and it still holds a mattress off the floor just fine.
Their stuff is exactly as good as it needs to be. If you were to cut it up and look inside, you'd be shocked how cheap the materials are (big parts of the LACK are literally made of cardboard), but in my experience, you don't notice this in everyday use, and that's the really important part. That's good engineering vs. the medieval approach of just throwing a lot of wood at it until it's definitely enough.
Combine it with scale, and the result is me being able to furnish my entire apartment for the price that I'd pay for a single piece of "quality" furniture. My desk (where I shelled out for the slightly more expensive "higher quality" version with a 25? year warranty) and kitchen countertop look like new despite heavy use.
Will everything survive a move? Maybe not. That's why I plan to sell to the next tenant what they want to keep, from the rest dump (recycling or waste-to-energy, not landfill) whatever breaks, is not practical to dis- and reassemble, or doesn't fit the new apartment, and then buy new IKEA furniture that actually fits (and have it delivered and assembled by IKEA for probably not much more than the cost of moving "good" furniture).
I have a television entertainment center setup that I've had for about 9 years and it's still a great piece of furniture. I have 2 kallax bookcases that are still working pretty great (though they are wobbly, but you're supposed to put supports on the back wall, anyway); and, I have a bed that I bought from them that has been working amazingly for probably 7ish years at this point. That's been the only real problem piece of equipment, one because a piece went missing during a move and the other because it has to be completely disassembled during a move and that tends to weaken it a bit.
Otherwise, my equipment from Ikea has been just fine over all. I'm even still using some of those junky $10 end tables for various things.
Has something more recently happened? Or have I just gotten lucky? Or?
To her, and to anyone else, this is a shit piece of furniture. The truth is that it’s largely operator error. “High quality” furniture is almost impossible to fuck up. It’s preassembled and built like a tank.
IKEA furniture is what the owner makes it. If the owner builds it well, and keeps the screws tight, and doesn’t overstuff it — it’s brilliant stuff, and will last a long time.
If the owner does a half ass job putting it together, and lazily tightens the screws, and expects it to stay good forever with zero maintenance, it will devolve into crap.
You could find an analogy between Mac vs. Linux here somewhere — though, it’s not perfect.
Anyone who thinks IKEA is anything less than an industrial design marvel should go buy a few things there. Having done so recently, my perspective has completely shifted, and I actually love IKEA.
The smallest Lack coffee table (€10 or so) is assembled with double-ended screws from the legs into the tabletop. There's no way it can take any sideways stress, e.g. by someone leaning or standing on it. A child falling onto the table can break it.
The larger Lack coffee table has the same legs, but adds a thin shelf for additional structure. If the shelf is loaded with a few books, it bows after a while. (I have this table.)
There are similar problems with the €10 metal furniture.
If you buy one of their $50-$200 coffee tables though, they’ll be just as solid as most other furniture — assuming proper assembly — and are still a fraction of the price.
But I also did a chest of drawers (where you nail the backing on) and bookshelves and you just wouldn't be disassembling them. Those would benefit - greatly - from glue.
...and then buy flatpack furniture from a competitor and compare...
I've done it a couple of times for different reasons, and it's always a shitshow. Everyone loves to joke about the IKEA instruction manuals, but they're much, much, better than anything from the competition. Quality and innovation is always better with the IKEA stuff, because they're driving the technology, not copying from someone else. And the price is always better with IKEA, because they have economies of scale unlike any other competitor.
And if you want solid wood furniture, you can get that at IKEA too, but it costs 10x as much as the particleboard items. (And if you go to the competition, it costs 20x as much...)
That said, a lot of ikea furniture is made of a fiberboard/mdf type material which is a light-duty material. For most use cases it doesn't matter.
But take that minimalist-look bookshelf with a fern and 2 books and add a whole row of books and it will sag.
I had bookshelves made of actual wood, and they don't sag (along the grain). I guess because the wood was evolved to hold tons of tree in place vertically and horizontally.
But ikea also sells stronger stuff like metal shelves. Just buy the appropriate stuff for the task.
Edit: paper furniture isn’t new and secret. Old article about it: https://gizmodo.com/and-now-ikea-is-making-sofas-out-of-pape...
Expedit and Kallax have different size, German description: https://new-swedish-design.de/de/blog/expedit-vs.-kallax-reg...
Yes, but Kallax is IKEA's official replacement for Expedit.
Probably depends what you buy. If you buy the cheap-as-chips stuff, you get wha you pay for.
I would like to see some evidence on this. I read this all the time and it does not reflect my experiences.
As an aside, if you ever buy the same piece of Ikea furniture a few years later it's interesting to see what has been changed.
As a bit of a hobbyist wood worker, Ikea furniture is slightly soul destroying. It's often more expensive to buy the wood stock materials than it is to buy the finished Ikea piece.
We have the 'same' dresser bought three times in three different years. The first one is pretty solid wood, the second one is more particle board, but still decent, the newest one is much flimsier and much more lightweight particle board and is actually falling apart while the two older ones are still going strong.
Don’t tell me about it. I built an Enzo Mari bookshelf and afterwards realised I had built an IKEA Ivar but spent the double price in wood.
A big reason most of our (non custom made) furniture is IKEA is because it strikes a pretty ideal balance between price and quality and allows you to "get to town" with changes. Most other "crap furniture" does not at all support such modifications to it. For starters because some of the things we bought even though they said solid wood on the label did not actually fully consist of solid wood and were useless after cutting off a piece.
Well, yes, we're back to supply chains here; just as on digikey you might find that the unit price for 1x an item is twice the unit price for 100x or even 10x, the supply chain to bring you a tiny quantity of wood to enjoy the premium experience of being a craftsman is quite expensive compared to anything mass-produced. You are paying for the experience of making it yourself.
(And this is before we get into relative wood pricing between countries; it took me a long time to understand why America had all those wood-framed and paneled houses while they're virtually absent in the UK, and of course it's because the local old forests were depleted in previous centuries. To the point where there was a whole pre-20th century peasant architecture of stone houses with only a single piece of serious lumber in: the roof beam.)
You may well be right about the reason traditional British houses are made of stone and brick. However, if you watch a new build house going up you may well be surprised to see that the structure of the house is entirely wood framed (often mostly off site). The floors and the roof are all held up by the wood framework. A brick facade is then installed and tied into the wood framework.
"Used old IKEA furniture was made from wood and had some level of quality." - They still make furniture out of solid wood. I just bought some nicer solid wood bookshelves from them. You have to pay a bit more, but that should go without saying. You're probably not paying more than what you would have payed back in the day when taking inflation into account.
I wouldn't presume what's more sustainable in the culture we have today. Making something out of solid wood, and having it thrown away after 20 years because it wasn't fashionable, or wasn't taken care of properly, could easily be way worse than making something out of veneer, wood fiber and cardboard if it's used for at least 10 years.
"Current new things there are made from paper!!!" - Yeah, some things are. So what? In my experience they're still engineered to do the job they need to do for as long as you need it to. I know there's cardboard core in a coffee table and some wall shelves I have. I've taken the shelf down and up several times without issues, and pushed it quite hard to test it, since I knew my kids might try to pull on it.. it was just fine. Kids have been jumping on the coffee table without problems. If you can get sufficient strength with less materials, why not? You have to be DAMN sure that the table will be used for 50+ years if you're going to make it out of a more resource intensive solid hard-wood.
"New IKEA things can’t be moved, because assembling and disassembling them does not work anymore. " - Uh, I just disassembled and reassembled a not very old cabinet made of wood fiber from IKEA. It was fine.
The article stated that the furniture should be returned without disassembling it. At my local IKEA I can rent a van for just 3 hours for a very low price, that should fit a couple of bookshelves without disassembling them.
I don't think the idea that we should make everything out of solid wood and have it last for 100 years is actually sustainable today. We're resource-constrained today, making everything out of solid wood would put a huge strain on the environment at a time where it's already under extreme pressure. The population in western countries is already starting to decline, so I don't see the point of sacrificing the environment today to reduce resource consumption in 50+ years. I don't think it's likely that solid wood furniture will be exported to Africa and South-East Asia where there will be population growth in the coming decades either.
Another point of view: the IKEA cardboard honeycomb material is AWESOME!
It's made from recycled material, it doesn't weigh anything, it's very strong when compared to weight and price, the surface is pretty resilient and it doesn't produce a lot of waste when it is inevitably discarded.
In today's single use culture (which needs to go away) it would be a terrible waste of resources to use nice hardwood to build cheap coffee tables that get swapped out when the fashion changes.
You can still get hardwood furniture that will last several lifetimes. It will make you feel a little lighter in the pocket, but you buy once and cry once.
If the surface coating gets damaged or the surface gets pierced or it becomes waterlogged from spills or environmental humidity, it will quickly go bad. But they're pretty resilient to normal household use.
You get what you pay for. A LACK honeycomb table costs 7€. What can you expect at this price?
I think I was neither, as I repeated it three times and always got the same result (I was moving every couple of years, so I threw out the crooked desk top when moving and bought identical one in a new place). Eventually, I stopped getting those $40 honeycomb desk tops and got a wooden one, from IKEA as well (made not from solid wood, but from sort of glued together mosaic of small wood pieces, don't know what it's called) for around $100, which is still good as new after 8 years of usage.
With ikea a kid can get his own setup, brand new and age appropriate.
Princess or racecar bed when they're young. bed with a desk underneath when they're getting to homework age, full sized bed when they reach 90th percentile. All with matching extras, and not too much money.
By the way, have you noticed the price and quality of furniture store furniture (when they're not "going out of business"?) A lot of it is either 10x ikea price or only 4x but still made with fiberboard underneath.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/us/ikea-dresser-lawsuit-s...
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-these-ikea-dressers-killing...
and many many more
- IKEA will only accept things in decent-ish condition and will (if necessary) refurbish and resell them.
- you get a voucher, not cash
So an assumption that they try to kill the second hand market seems absurd - on the contrary they become a marketplace for good-condition second hand products AND get people into the store with a voucher in hand (which means they might spend even more to buy something and like many vouchers may also end up unclaimed).
So no nefariousness here, just good business sense. Nonetheless having used options in the store, allowing you to decide to take that shelf new for 130 or that used one for 70 seems to me as a net gain for everyone.
"Good business sense" seems to rarely correlate with benefits for society these days, so it's wise to be skeptical.
Why? If you get a better price in the second hand market and someone will pick it up from your home, why would you sell it back to Ikea.
Also convenience.
It would make sense on many business levels (e.g. I'd image negative impact of flimsyness growing almost exponentially with each year a bad product stays in the catalogue, designing for cheap or sturdy being muchbless costly than designing for cheap and sturdy and so on), but I have no idea if Ikea are good enough to consider that consciously (I do think they'd at least be closer top that level than most others)
I bought my first house a few years ago and started to look for more serious furniture. I spent months looking for a good cabinet for my TV + consoles + storage, but could't find anything. I buckled and went for an ikea setup in the end, using their design tool to come up with something really neat and affordable. I mean yeah it's particle board, but it looks good and will be just fine for the next ten years.
People now want to be able to afford new furniture every 5-10 years, cardboard one is not the issue if it is designed to look good.
Minority of people would buy furniture 10x expensive that lasts 10x longer then the cardboard one (I wouldn't).
That being said, I'm not super into fast fashion / 'influencer culture', either, so maybe I'm in the minority here?
Furniture like a simple table should last you a lifetime, and last your children a lifetime beyond that. You should be able to repair and fix damage. Most furniture can't even become obsolete for technical reasons.
Instead Ikea use veneers and crumbling particle materials so you can't fix it at all. Many people say you essentially can't move Ikea furniture between houses because you can't dismantle it and if you tried to it'd simply fall apart.
Ikea was a terrible thing to happen to furniture - disposable single-use furniture - madness.
My IKEA dinner table is solid wood, though, perfectly repairable if need be; same with chairs.
I'm sure that this does not apply to every piece they make, but I wouldn't shit on every thing they make.
Another thing I like about IKEA is that I can get parts for most of the things that tend to break. My friend had a custom made kitchen. One of the cabinet hindges broke but the contractor was nowhere to be found to replace it, and he had to scour the internets for that specific replacement. If one of the hindges in my IKEA kitchen breaks I'm sure I'll be able to replace it, probably at no cost, because it's still being made and probably will still be made in 10 years.
Don't be too sure of that. IKEA has greatly sped up their 'upgrade' cycle lately. Somethings are around unchanged year after year, but more and more things aren't. I've had several cases where I came back to IKEA 2 years later and wanted to expand or replace a thing in a furniture series only to find it discontinued.
They are actually really good at detailing all materials used for their product - you know whether you are buying a shelf made of chrome plated steel, galvanised steel, epoxy coated steel, or galvanised and then epoxy coated.
Look at Argos on the other hand - you have no clue of it's paper honycomb, particleboard or wood. You get a cat in a bag.
Not only say that. It has happened to me. I bought 3 doors wardrobe with 2 mirror doors. 2 years later I was moving to a different accommodation, wardrobe fall apart when we were holding it above stairs. Only mirror doors were reusable. The rest filled full container for garbage.
I'm all for buy-for-life, so I bought only oak-made furniture since then. I still visit IKEA quite often, but just for plants and clearance section where you can find sheepskin, natural carpets and IoT lights for 1/3 of price. They also have really good hot chocolate and cakes :D
A leg came off my desk once. I drilled new holes and was able to screw the leg back in. Similarly a slide on a dresser drawer somehow got bent out of shape and I was able to get a single replacement part sent to me from IKEA. The only real problem I have with IKEA furniture is that most of it can't survive disassembly and reassembly well enough for me to flat-pack it when moving; I have to move it fully assembled.
I am amazed that such cheap (in both price and quality) furniture can last that long. Granted, I haven't ever tried to karate chop my desk in half, but I have come to the conclusion that even the worst furniture is fine. But I probably won't give my $20 desk to my eventual grandkids.
But it sure would be nice if they used fewer one-or-two-time fixings like particle board screws.
There are some things that will fall apart (wardrobes, kitchens etc), having participated in a few moves: I assure you that non-ikea stuff from the '70s will also have issues: panels will have bent, cheap parts will crumble, adjustments that were made to fit it to the original position won't work anymore etc.
That is, even if you wanted, because the style of a 30 year old wardrobe is likely to not fit anything you will buy in this decade and you'll still not want it around.
The idea of furniture that lasts a lifetime is dead because of the pace of modern fashion changes, not because you can't reuse things, the same way it is for shoes and clothes.
Yes, but that's not such a big problem
- MDF/Particulate is more efficient at using the whole tree and more friendly to native forests as opposed to traditional furniture
- Less weight than traditional furniture
- Moving costs > purchase costs.
You want traditional solid furniture? Go to a flea market, used furniture store. It can probably be gotten for cheap as it is a nuisance. It weights a ton, it is hard to move, it is less ergonomic (though I have some beef with some current Ikea stuff) etc
Yes it will last forever, but it does require maintenance (which most of the time can't be done in-situ, so take that heavy thing downstairs, to a shop, etc, back, etc). Not practical
So thanks but no thanks
From homefinding TV shows I am aware of some places where selling houses or apartments furnished seems to be a thing. At the other end of things, there are cultures where people take their kitchen cabinets with them. .. I tend to think of more energy-constrained futures, and generational downsizing in terms of housing, so I wonder if the former could spread. Convenience in moving > signalling perfect taste?
The disparate experiences across people lead me to think that some people are unknowingly handling it roughly and quickly without much thought.
Also, if you can afford to get better ones, get them. Although Ikea is already not the cheapest, we used to be lower middle class in Hungary and couldn't afford Ikea stuff and bought similar particle board stuff from no name places that was way harder to assemble and was less structurally strong. For all the hate it gets, Ikea is well designed for average Western European and North American students and young adults. Once you earn like an average American middle class family, you can afford better furniture, so if it's important to you, do it. But many people know what they are getting and are satisfied with the tradeoffs.
Furniture might last. Living arrangements don't, especially in the early part of life as an independent adult. The fate of quite a lot of cheap furniture is to be dumped in the street, unfortunately - but that's also mostly mattresses and couches, which aren't part of the IKEA re-use scheme.
There's an existing charity shop economy of used furniture, much of which is house clearances of the dead; it's pretty cheap, because the cost of moving it around dominates.
It isn't like older furniture was always able to be dismantled. It depended on what it was. Bedframe? Sure. Take the legs off of the dining table. And I'm pretty sure you can do this to most Ikea furniture.
On the other hand, you'd take the drawers out of a dress or desk. The shelves out of a bookcase. And simply move what was left. That tall, heavy display cabinet went in one piece. That huge desk was still heavy without the drawers, and taking it apart would absolutely ruin it.
I'll also point out that fewer people would have furniture if it weren't for Ikea and other flat pack furniture.
Have you thought about the consequences if everyone bought furniture like that? There's a reason why solid wood furniture is more expensive, it's a LOT more resource intensive and wasteful during manufacturing. Imagine if everyone started buying all solid wood furniture tomorrow? How many more trees would be cut down? How much wood fiber left over from making other products would be wasted because people wouldn't want it for furniture anymore?
"Ikea was a terrible thing to happen to furniture - disposable single-use furniture - madness."
I haven't seen a single person back this up with any facts, i.e. - what's the resource use per year of an average IKEA furniture and the alternative?
I'm willing to bet you and others are just making a giant assumption, based on your own personal annoyance that the furniture isn't as solid as you'd like.
I'm not going to make a strong counter-claim. Yes, IKEAs way could be worse, but I've yet to see proof of that, and you can make a pretty strong argument that IKEAs way has a potential to be more sustainable. Especially if they manage to recycle the wood fibers efficiently.
"Many people say you essentially can't move Ikea furniture between houses because you can't dismantle it and if you tried to it'd simply fall apart." - In my experience that's simply wrong. I just disassembled/reassembled a relatively new IKEA wardrobe during renovation. I did not handle it gently. It was no problem. Yeah, you can get some damage, but nothing a bit of glue, an extra screw and/or plaster+paint can't fix easily. You can get catastrophic damage if you're not careful, but I'm willing to bet that the probability of that is low enough that the global impact on average lifetime is low.
The priority is reduce, reuse, recycle.
Buying lifetime furniture is working to 'reduce'.
Ikea is (only now) introducing 'recycle', the worst option of the three.
What if I turn that argument around? What if people started buying solid wood furniture? It would result in an increased amount of wood being used in items where the carbon will remain in place for a very long time. The trees would be replaced with newly planted ones that sequester even more carbon, and so we end up with less carbon in the atmosphere.
Now, this obviously assumes that we can make the solid wood furniture with a small enough carbon footprint for this to work, but the general idea isn't bad.
I've bought non-IKEA furniture since and it's just like I remember it. Even pre-assembled stuff is all veneer, so when your kid bangs it up you can't really touch it up or buff it out.
I'd love to get all solid wood stuff. (IKEA does have some solid-wood stuff. I have a bookshelf I've moved 4 or 5 times and have had for probably 10 years) I hear some parts of the world still readily sell solid wood furniture at reasonable prices--just not around me. One issue with solid wood furniture is the size and weight. Fitting it through a door, into a car, or up 3 flights of stairs doesn't make sense for a college dorm or a studio apartment.
The majority of their catalogue items are actually solid wood, the particleboard items are the minority.
But by sales volume, it's very much the other way around, which gives you the wrong impression about what they actually offer.
I bought a secondhand oak coffee table, heavy and chunky, and I have no clue how old it is; could be 20, could be 70, we may never know. But buying something like that new would cost hundreds, probably.
In 10 years time you will see a nicer, more modern table that you could buy.
It is similar to phones, you could use old dumbphone for 10 years (I still have mine somewhere and use it when I send my smartwatch for repairs), but majority of people don't want to.
The argument makes some sense for phones, which are fast-evolving hardware. Typical house furniture is a mature design.
For example I don't care about any furniture my parents had, it was ugly and it sucked. Not going into "fine china" or whatever crap my mother used to hoard.
When I move between flats, I might reuse some furniture but a lot of it I would have to sell. I would lose loads of money if I would buy expensive furniture and then sell it for 70% of what I paid for, I don't even think I could get that much for used furniture, probably 50% would be more realistic.
Cheap IKEA I can basically give away and not have to haggle for price with cheapskates over the phone (mental health toll for me is too high if I have to sell something). If it is broken I can dump it and since it is cardboard it probably will not be that bad for environment.
If someone is having steady life conditions for next 20 years then he can afford "life time" items. With current situation I would not count on that and I'd rather have stuff that I can easily dispose/give away in case I have to move to smaller apartment because I cannot afford current one anymore.
Owning things also has its costs, like if I am renting flat and have shitty neighbors I can just move to other place. When I would own a flat I am stuck with whatever comes my way.
Kids move out and get their own places and their own furniture long before their parents kick the bucket. My wife's grandmother had a house of solid wood furniture. It all went into an estate sale and I'm guessing most of it ended up in the landfill. Her kids already had their own houses full of their own furniture and lived across the country.
As always, you get what you pay for.
A LACK coffee table costs $30, because it's made of particleboard.
But if you buy a HEMNES coffee table or a LIATORP for example, you will get a piece of solid wood furniture that will last generations, but it's gonna cost you $300 instead.
It's not exactly surprising that people are buying the "good enough" stuff that's 10x cheaper, because if that option didn't exist, people would simply buy a lot less furniture overall, because quality furniture is expensive, even at IKEA.
By making sustainable living more simple and accessible, Ikea hopes that the initiative will help its customers take a stand against excessive consumption this Black Friday and in the years to come
If you want to solve excessive consumption, you should do that exactly, which means tackling the problem itself and somehow achieving that people reduce the amount of things bought.
Offering recycling on the other hand doesn't really do that - or at least, I am not aware of a mechanism psychological or otherwise which makes consumers buy less because of recycling. And even if it does isn't it still a band-aid solution, and you're still not dealing with the root cause? Moreover, it does seem recycling is a nice way both for IKEA and customers to buy themselves the comforting (but fake) feeling of doing something sustainable while at the same time keeping things going as usual. Or who knows, even increasing 'hey I can recycle this so doesn't matter if I buy more, I'm still doing my thing for the planet'.
PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION
RAW =====*=============*=========> LANDFILL
MATERIALS
RECYCLING (small %)
/--------------------------\
| PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION |
RAW v=====*============*=======^=> LANDFILL
MATERIALS
Find a way to proportionally link production with disposal and you will see a 5 pack of undies from Kmart change into a durable good that's built to last.
> Ikea will soon be selling pre-used versions of some of its best sellers
> Ikea said that anything that cannot be resold will be recycled.
Recycling is a last resort here, the primary news here is that IKEA is going to be selling refurbished items (aka re-use) and incentivising people to partake by offering trade-in value when they bring their items back.
This move is primarily meant to counter people throwing away furniture prematurely when moving. This way people can re-sell their items to IKEA, and IKEA will sell it in good state to other people that can re-use it. This seems like it would be better for the environment than everybody logging around heavy furniture cross-country (or cross-continent), because unnecessary transport costs are avoided, and is certainly much better than the status quo of people throwing away old IKEA furniture that is still perfectly usable.
To me this seems like a good idea. Do you have any better ideas? Reduce would be theoretically preferable, but good luck convincing people not to use a bed, a desk or a dining room table.
Is that even technically possible? 'Most of it', perhaps, though for some of the materials they use I'd really like to see the technical side of how they o it, but 'anything' seems far fetched.
This move is primarily meant to counter people throwing away furniture prematurely when moving
Yes, I'm not denying that. This is what they are doing, but at the same time they are saying hopes that the initiative will help its customers take a stand against excessive consumption. My point being: where is the link between those 2?
So just to be clear: I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, probably leaning towards good, but with a bunch of considerations in mind: selling their things second hand or even giving away is what people also have been doing already. In case of selling they get back money, with IKEA they'll get back vouchers, limited to 50%. Imo it adds to the idea that recycling is good. It is, but only if there really is recycling (for some products it's a complete myth pushed by the industry) and even then, not having to recycle in the first place is better. From the article: should then return them - fully assembled - to the returns desk - this sounds like they're expecting people to transport complete things (or disassmble/reassemble on the spot). That's kind of a showstopper.
This seems like it would be better for the environment than everybody logging around heavy furniture cross-country (or cross-continent), because unnecessary transport costs are avoided
This is tricky. Current system: buy X, transport X home, transport X to landfill. Or with second hand: buy X, transport X home, transport X to new home. New system: buy X, transport X home, transport X back to IKEA, transport X to new home or landfill. So there are a lot of variables to consider here so I wouldn't be suprised if ot turns out to be sometimes better and sometimes worse, i.e. really hard to use it in an argument of it being better overall.
good luck convincing people not to use a bed, a desk or a dining room table.
To state the obvious: that is not at all what this is about and as far as I can tell I also never gave that impression in my comment. It's about teaching people about the value of durability, i.e. convincing people they do not have to buy a new bed or desk every x years. Now how do you achive that? I honestly don't know for sure. But seeing that previous generations had no (or much less) problems with that, it means it's something which is teacheable, so I'd start with that. As a push back agains consumerism, educate the young ones and explain them there are cases where it is possible to buy one thing for a lifetime (or so), that there is nothing wrong with buying second had goods, etc.
I think you underestimate two things here: (1) people would much rather go to IKEA to return an item than to sell on craigslist, and (2) people would trust IKEA much more when buying a refurbished item, rather than buying used from craigslist. The fact that it is IKEA itself that is doing this and making it easier for consumers can drastically increase both the pool of items that are being re-used, and the amount of people that will consider buying used items.
> To state the obvious: that is not at all what this is about and as far as I can tell I also never gave that impression in my comment. It's about teaching people about the value of durability, i.e. convincing people they do not have to buy a new bed or desk every x years. Now how do you achive that? I honestly don't know for sure. But seeing that previous generations had no (or much less) problems with that, it means it's something which is teacheable, so I'd start with that. As a push back agains consumerism, educate the young ones and explain them there are cases where it is possible to buy one thing for a lifetime (or so), that there is nothing wrong with buying second had goods, etc.
The previous generations had a very different life. Fewer people were moving across the country, and fewer people were moving to different continents. People would stay in one place and work for the same company for decades. This is simply not the reality of today. Many people do not stay in the same place for more than a few years, and the distances they are moving are larger than ever before.
Furniture has adapted to this new reality, and unless that reality changes again, it will not go back to the way it used to be. When you move across country it is impractical to take furniture along with you. Worse, it is straight up bad for the environment. Renting a truck and driving 3000 miles to lug around a table, a bed and a desk is a horrible idea from an environmentalist point of view. It is much better to avoid that transportation cost and give away your furniture locally for re-use, and get somebody else's furniture at your destination. This is exactly what IKEA is trying to accomplish here.
Not surprised. Ikea furniture is made out of particle board--saw dust with resins. Last I researched it can't be recycled.
I think it's a brilliant move to ensure both the seller and the buyer of the furniture now have to stop by IKEA, the promised land of impulse buys. And paying for the furniture in IKEA vouchers means the real re-purchase cost for IKEA is even lower.
How is that even possible? Ikea furniture is particle board and frequently doesn't survive being moved a single time.
Tighten a few screws and the cabinets and drawers seem to work year after year.
I think the idea that IKEA furniture does not last is a result of IKEA being very transparent about how the furniture is made.
I would be guessing, but the difference between countries may be the purchasing habits. Most german houses may already have better/built in X (or just sufficient other types), maybe most US houses do not have X.
There are also people who endlessly complain how uncomfortable it is to fly with low-cost airlines like Ryanair, but you can bet they will pick the cheapest low-cost flight for their next trip as well and complain again. If you want comfort you'll have to pay for it. Otherwise, you get what you pay for. It's still perfectly good for its function. Perhaps it gets a bit crooked or it's kind of moving and warping when you open it, but whatever. It holds my clothes and books just fine. If you want to, you can add further metal parts to strengthen the frame as well.
This is exactly it. If you've experienced better, you'll compare it to known experiences regardless of cost.
> Perhaps it gets a bit crooked or it's kind of moving and > warping when you open it, but whatever. It holds my clothes > and books just fine. If you want to, you can add further > metal parts to strengthen the frame as well.
Here in lies the problem, you simply can't have the risk of things 'falling over' when you got kids or people with motor skill issues, which I think is why these expectations exist for those with children.
I've been 3d printing all my reinforcements for furniture which seems to solve most problems.
We just "upgraded" our house with a bunch of second-hand IKEA furniture, buying their typical drawers and bookcases for $20 each using Facebook marketplace.
Considering that buying a new piece would be $200, and a used one is $20 and already assembled, and I had to drive 1 mile down the road to pick it up, it was a win.
Now say I am a seller though. I have a bookcase for 200, and it is gently used so I'd get 40% credit back. That's $80, which is of course better than 20, but it would require me loading the fully assembled case into the car (on top of the car?) and driving it to Ikea, all for an additional 60 bucks gain. If I have the car, and able to move it, and have the time, 60/hour is still a good "income" for a lot of people. But boy that's a lot of work for a one time benefit, and most Ikea pieces that can be car-transported when assembled don't even cost 200 bucks.
It's hard to imagine a lot of people going through the trouble, when they can just sell it for a few bucks to a neighbor and forget it.
On the other hand, if you get UHAL, grab 10 bookshelves, pickup and deliver them all to IKEA on the same day, now that's $500 in profit. Someone could make a good side hustle out of it.
Anyway, we shall see.
A guy I know says he just packs his belongings into his SUV and he's free to move from airbnb to airbnb, negotiating a good price for them (e.g. staying in summer vacation apartments during winter time).
Recycling large furniture, such as sofas, just because they have one tiny part responsible for folding broken, is not really an eco friendly way to go.
How is that any different for large furniture from larger vendors like Macys?
My workbench is a drop leaf table (only drops on one end h that was designed for a kitchen table. Solid as a rock and solid pine.
My only regret is not buying more of the wide drawers that were available in the early 2000'. It's hard to find ones that fit exactly in the Ivar units.
IKEA furniture is built to last just enought time, it's full of composite materials that for sure are really hard to recycle.
This is the same BS speach as Apple not providing a charger.
If you want to provide greener solutions, provide things that can last longer, are easy repairable and upgradable. It will hurt your profits because you won't be able to shove as many products down the consumers throats, but that's the way it has to be.
Fully assembled? Will they be ok with me disassembling the furniture for transport and then assembling it in front of the return desk?
When they heard it was IKEA the guy said it was more trouble than it was worth for them because they end up throwing it out. When I said "no problem, I'll break it up for kindling for my dad" he immediately said, "Wait! It's wood! Yeah, we'll happily take that."
For example, not everyone can afford more expensive furniture or are unable to wait for furniture to become available on the secondary markets (e.g. Craigslist, yard sales, finding stuff on the side of the road, etc.).
It's a mistake to think that buying pricey/"longer lasting" furniture is _always_ the right move.
Other cheapo brands LOOK cheap, IKEA doesn't.
Then I learned how much cheaper, modular, and more robust your furniture can be if you invest in some hand tools and built it yourself. You have a higher initial outlay, but the results last longer, can be repaired much easier, as well as broken down and repurposed. Most furniture can be assembled with a cheap hand saw and chisels, or if you're lazy, skilsaw, drill, drill bit set, and screws.
I don't know that i'll ever buy a piece of furniture again unless it's second-hand and deeply discounted. There's so much good shit out there already.
It expects companies to grow forever, and thus they have to come up with ways to reduce the working life of stuff they make.
Imagine if we made furniture with mostly good, strong metal. They would last lifetimes, but Ikea, as a company would probably stagnate after a while.
I shop a lot at Ikea too, but usually take care to purchase their stuff that's made with metal. They make a lot of those and those are very durable, if not a bit costly (in India)
Almost damaged a joining part once, but that was our own fault for not completely disassembling out of laziness.