I will not write about traffic because I’ve spent a week gnawing at my knuckles behind the steering wheel and that’s enough of pent up frustration for a decade.

I work from home one day a week, which spares me the traffic ordeal. In fact, rather than suggesting boats, ski-jets, helicopters and what not, the transport minister should simply encourage more teleworking; there’d be much fewer cars on the road and he would be on time for press conferences.

The day I work from home is the day I write this column. On this particular day this week, home is a jumble of boxes. Boxes containing furniture, to be more precise. I am trying not to look around me – the very thought of unboxing everything is terribly unnerving – and instead am taking the longest time ever to write this column.

We are, by the by, moving things round in the house, which essentially means finding new, happier corners for old pieces, putting in place furniture which had been long been in storage, and getting in new items: some made to measure by clever carpenters, others we got from Ikea as we drove down to Malta a fortnight ago.

Now, let’s pause for a second here. Ikea (pronounced eekeya not aykiia). I first got a taste of the Scandinavian store chain of flat-packed furniture when I lived in Luxembourg.

I had immediately taken to it because a) it was affordable b) it was good quality c) you didn’t have to wait three months before you saw the furniture at your house and d) it was minimalistic, a style which was not very common in standard furniture shops in Malta.

However, there is one problem: the IKEA experience can be very, very stressful.

Apart from the fact that it’s not good for people who, like me, are overwhelmed by huge selling spaces and by too many people milling around (I can never do Oxford Street for example); there is also the tiny matter that you are choosing items which are an expression of your identity. And you have to share/compromise that with the person who back home, will be sharing the same furniture space.

What if you cannot agree on which item to choose? Does this mean that you are not made for each other?

What if you cannot agree on which item to choose? Does this mean that you don’t have the same taste? Does this mean that you are not made for each other? Argh! Furniture stores brings out all sorts of existential questions.

Here’s how it can be a breeding space for squabbles: You start off with the choice of style: will it be retro or classic? Hemnes or Klingsbo? Then there’s colour: birch veneer or dark ash? White or black? You disagree on every issue.

In the meantime you both get distracted and wander off separately to check out items which were never on your list, putting things in the trolley that you never thought you needed. Then one of you gets lost in that maze of aisle-upon-aisle of picture-perfect home sections. When you finally bump into each other again, you trudge to the windowless warehouse to pick up the items trying to aimlessly follow arrows which direct you to your flat-packed chest of drawers.

By then you’re hungry and you desperately in need of the loo and your head is throbbing with the sound of children screaming and you cannot bear to see yet another extra-large yellow carrier bag of Ikea. Am I the only one to get a cold sweat before even setting foot in the furniture shop?

No. Phew.

According to the Wall Street Journal, many people find shopping at Ikea “an emotionally destablising experience”. Dr Ramani Durvasula, a professor of psychology at California State University, says that people in her therapy sessions mentioned Ikea-related arguments so frequently that she began making research trips to the store.

Meanwhile someone at the University College London, even made some Ikea-related research and came up with the revelation that it’s an arguments’ trigger because it makes you long for their ready-made kitchens and model bedrooms, by presenting them in an environment which makes you feel at home. But then you go home and you realise that to get the showroom look, you need to roll up your sleeves and go down on your knees and spend hours trying to solve a woodwork puzzle.

Because that’s the Part Two of the stressful event. You go home with the flat packs and their assembly manuals and it all looks so simple, and you think it will be a matter of half an hour to finish the project. Not.

There is a way of beating the stress at DIY furniture shops, it’s very similar to looping traffic in fact: you go as early as possible when there’s less people or you simply stay at home and ‘work’ at it online.

Still, furniture-choosing when sharing a house will always be a test. But in my book, if you survive it, you can survive lots of other things.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti