See if you can guess where I was (seemed like several weeks) yesterday.

So Mrs. Z06 “asked” if WE could go to the store that uses made up* words for the products it sells. It had been close to 3 years since we drove the 64 mile round trip to its massive hulk, squatting in the broiling AZ Summer sun. With a parking lot that could hold more vehicles than our NFL stadium’s, we arrived just minutes after it opened!

A ‘FREE BEER’ sign would not have attracted a bigger crowd! Then we realized it was the last shopping weekend before the start of school… wall-to-wall kids and crazy parents.

After an hour or so I started taking phone pix of the item names. At first I thought about looking the words up but decided I might get on some “list” if they turned out to be less than funny descriptions. Some words looked like medical conditions possibly requiring penicillin!

*Disclaimer: I did poorly in high school French, Latin, and Greek (Jesuit education), so I really don’t know if they are “made up words” or not.

Ikea's product names are not made-up words. They're real Scandinavian words (from the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Danish languages).

However, the names usually don't specifically relate directly to that product. They do usually follow some sort of basic trend within each category, though. For example, all the carpets might be named after rivers in Norway, while all the lamps might be named after Swedish towns, and all the kitchen utensil sets might be named after Finnish sports terminology.

So while they're "real words", they're fairly nonsensical in meaning, at least in relation to the products they represent.

Next time you succumb to the pressure to go, play a little game and see if it gets you out of going again:


https://youtu.be/7T2oje4cYxw

Ikea; Where divorce and legal separations start.

Oooooo, just there Sunday. We go in for a matching lamp from another trip. We can’t just bypass all the other crap, and go get it....nooooo. We have to wander through the entire store, beginning to end. An attempt at a shortcut was met with, I wanna see the picture frames. Seriously? We have a box of them at home... half of them don’t even have pictures. Felt like a river alright, like the river Styx into hades.

My kids love that place. They like bouncing on furniture, and they adore the stuffed animals. Cheap entertainment.

Some of their other stuff isn't half bad either.