Brooklyn Apartment Moving Hacks: About IKEA Furniture

While it’s not a rule that every Brooklyn home has a piece of IKEA furniture in it, plenty of them do. The IKEA store in Red Hook is many Brooklyn shopper’s favorite destination, where strangely-named furniture can be found in a huge, warehouse-like setting. Earlier this week, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA passed away. He was a pretty amazing guy, and in honor of the many, many pieces of IKEA furniture we’ve moved over the years, we’d like to share some facts about him as well as some IKEA moving hacks for living in Brooklyn:

Ingvar Kamprad started his first business when he was five years old. As a kindergarten-age child, Ingvar had his aunt hook him up with matches she’d purchased in a big city where she lived; Ingvar then sold these matches at a huge profit in his smaller town. In addition to a testament to his hard-working nature, this story illustrates that the Swedish people are really laid back. Brooklyn has its share of young entrepreneurs but they are by and large devoted to less flammable enterprises.

IKEA furniture may need to be taken apart to be moved successfully. IKEA furniture is popular because it is affordable and lightweight, but those qualities also mean that your favorite bookcases and other pieces of IKEA furniture are not robust enough to stand up to the stresses of moving. Disassembling IKEA furniture before the move and reassembling it after helps ensure your furniture stays in great shape. Be aware that most pieces can only be taken apart and put back together a few times before they lose some of their structural integrity. Not sure how you’re going to handle this, given the fact you misplaced the assembly instruction book somewhere along the way? No problem: IKEA has put that information online. You can also visit your local IKEA for assistance.

All those weird IKEA names have a purpose. Ingvar Kamprad had a form of dyslexia which made it really hard for him to remember and work with item numbers. This made managing his business difficult, until Ingvar came up with a solution. He started naming his products, systematically creating his own sort of language that today is a well-known part of IKEA’s appeal.