IKEA!!!!

Governor Sonny Perdue's office puts out a lot of press releases, very few of which excite me personally. But this one excites me very much.

An Ikea store is opening in Atlanta! This is very good news for me, and very bad news for my debt situation.

As the press release points out, the nearest Ikea right now is in Woodbridge, Virginia or Houston, Texas. Lee and I took a camping trip to Virginia last year, and made a rather large detour to Woodbridge for the sole purpose of shopping at Ikea.

It was an overwhelming experience. Pulling into the parking lot, I felt like a child seeing Disney World for the first time. The store is mammoth, with so much great furniture at affordable prices. We spent about 3 hours in there the first night, looking in every section at every item. I had a notebook and pen out, and we made a list of all the things we liked. We even ate dinner there. Swedish meatballs and lingonberry juice, in honor of the store's Swedish origins.

That night in the hotel room, we prioritized. We made an "A, B, C," list of things we really wanted, decided how much we could get, then made our official shopping list. The next day, we managed to spend about an hour and a half in the store just getting the items on our list and looking at everything else one last time.

Since that maiden voyage, we have toyed with the idea of returning to Woodbridge to go to Ikea again. But the long trip there has always stopped us. Who wants to spend money on gas and a hotel room? Those are dollars that would be better spent in the store! Now, Atlanta's four hour drive will seem like a short commute, and well worth the cost of gas.

Yay, Ikea!

Now if only we knew where we'd be living by the time the store opens...