The holiday season is here. The beaches are filling up with people who would normally be working or studying, and children who would usually be at school. Conversations start or close with “what are you doing for Christmas?” or “will you be at home or are you going away?” The air-conditioned shopping centres are filling with people escaping the heat and buying gifts for their friends, relatives and loved ones.

Yes, the xmas gift. This brings a complication to my experiment. Even though the gifts I plan to buy are small in size and easily carried, not everything is within walking distance or within easy reach by bike. That four-letter word that could tangle my experiment is not a profanity in response to this quandary. It’s not even “gift” or “xmas”. It’s Ikea.

There are some gifts that I’d like to buy from Ikea. So what’s the problem? Well, Ikea isn’t ‘just down the road’. It’s 71.6 kilometres away – a fifty minute drive by car, three hours twenty by bus/train/bus and four hours fifteen by bike (thanks GoogleMaps ☺). Another option I researched was bike/train/bike. I can take my bike on the train if travelling on an off-peak train (9.30am-3pm). That journey (one-way) would involve at least fifty minutes by bike to the train station, forty minutes on the train, followed by seventeen minutes on my bike, at a cost of $20 for the round trip. Whichever way, it’s not easy to get there.

So I’ve been thinking, perhaps I’ll just find these gifts somewhere else, somewhere closer. That will solve it. Yet, in some ways it won’t because I like Ikea. And it’s not just because of the cinnamon rolls.

I like the premise on which Ikea operates – do more with less. I like the focus on good design, the creativity it inspires, the affordability of the products, the focus on renewable materials, and I like the socially inclusive style of what I read and see at Ikea. For these reasons and others, I like exchanging my money for an Ikea product. It resonates with what I value.

So now that I think some more, perhaps a drive in the car is worth it for this journey.

Coffee and cinnamon roll, anyone?

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