IKEA - Portland, OR

Denver doesn't have an IKEA store (one will be opening just south of Denver in Fall 2011) so I had yet to experience the phenomenon that is IKEA. Of course, I'd heard about it but I had never been to a store. About two years ago my sister visited the store in Ohio, spent over four hours there and fell in love with it. So before we started our drive home from the coast we stopped at the IKEA store in Portland, Oregon.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, IKEA (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/)is is a Scandinavian modern home decor company that has actually been around for decades but opened its first U.S. store in 1985 in Philadelphia.

This place is absolutely huge, so big the have a store map to help you. The top floor is the showroom with a kind of IKEA yellow brick road, leading you through the different departments. You can see already decorated living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms or just individual couches, chairs, tables, etc. If you see something you like, there is a special sheet that you can mark what you want and then you go downstairs where another specially marked path leads you through everything you saw upstairs; everything from candles and picture frames to linens and towels to anything and everything you'd need for the kitchen or bathroom. Did I mention there is also a cafeteria? It's Oz at the end of the showroom path, a place to re-fuel before going downstairs to actually purchase the things you might want.

I know IKEA isn't for everyone. It has a real contemporary look and everything is designed to go with everything else so that your living room will match your kitchen, etc. Some of the things I liked and some of the things I didn't. But that's kind of the fun of it.

So, although we already had a fully packed rented standard sized SUV we didn't walk away empty handed. My sister got a set of flatware (she tends to use plastic utensils a lot) for $10 and my Mom got two lamps (less than $25 for both). I didn't buy anything I decided that I have a year to think about what I might want to get and although my home is already furnished, mark my word, when that IKEA opens here next year I will have some items going to Goodwill.