The Nesting Instinct

August 18, 2008
Los Angeles, CA

We made a pilgrimage to IKEA yesterday to pick up a few new furniture pieces for the new house as moving day will be upon us soon. Don can’t help be give me a hard time about giving away my IKEA furniture pieces that I had bought 12 years ago to charity (because its wobbly) and buying newer ones.

IKEA at any day of the week is always a bit of a clauster-f* but especailly on the weekends. After we had paid for most of our stuff and I was waiting past the check out as Don needed to go back and get the right size rug for his office. I couldn’t help but wonder about all of these people who are at IKEA today, shopping for that bit of something that will make their lives that much more perfect, complete, a notch closer to the stylized life that we are supposed to live according to catalogs and magazines. I certainly am not above the criticism, after all, I am shopping at IKEA for our new home. But aside from the effort towards – whatever – there is a nesting instinct that is deeply rooted in us, the desire to make our home more secure, more comfortable, more HOME.

As we paid for these less than expensive furniture pieces, I couldn’t help but want for these new tables and desks to last forever. I wondered how we have traded quality for something that is disposable and literally stamped out of a factory. Maybe its the same reason why we eat at McDonalds – its easier and the cheaper price fills that nesting instinct instantly, instead of having to wait until you have the money for that one superior hand crafted table.

By the time I made it to the loading dock where you can load your new home onto the back to your car – I was put off by all the people jostling for position and have no regards for one another. I recalled that scene from “Fight Club” where Ed Norton’s character talks about he items in his apartment and how he kinda thought that he had it all. At that moment, I kinda wished all of it would go up in one giant flame of explosion (much like the scene that follows in “Fight Club”), the entire IKEA store and all the other stores around Burbank, selling you things that will come to own you one day instead.

Is there a way to fulfill our nesting instincts and not be trapped in the nest that we made, not be owned by it?