Because you get shopping perks like free coffee/tea, discounts on food and furniture, and invites to member-only events (read: first dibs at sale items). You’ll also accumulate points with each purchase, which can be redeemed for vouchers. Once you spend $150 within one year, you’ll be converted to a lifetime member with even more benefits. You can sign up online or in-store at one of the computers located around the store. Seriously guys, it’ll be the best 5 minutes you’ve ever spent signing up for something. EasyVan is sort of like Uber, but with vans and lorries instead of cars. If you need to transport bulky purchases, use the app to find an EasyVan driver near you. Prices are quite reasonable (calculate your price based on location here) and it’s much faster than using IKEA’s Home Delivery service (which usually takes a few days). IKEA FAMILY members can use the code ‘IKEAFAMILY’ for a $12 discount on your first order. If you’re parking at IKEA Alexandra, you can get 3 hours of free parking when you spend a minimum of $15 on home furnishing products ($5 for IKEA FAMILY Members).
Parking is free at IKEA Tampines. There are also free shuttle bus services from selected MRT stations to both IKEA Tampines and Alexandra (weekends only). See the schedules here and here. IKEA usually has special offers on selected products every 2 months or so, like this fuzzy white rug that every blogger worth her Instagram photos has. Check the IKEA Product Offers page before heading down to get a heads up on discounted items for the month. If you’re planning to eat at the IKEA Restaurant, check the Restaurant Offers page for meal deals. IKEA FAMILY Members can also use their membership card to score deals and discounts at participating merchants – such as Anchorpoint Shopping Centre tenants, Pet Lovers Centre and erm, Feng Shui consultation (because you never know when you might need a Feng Shui master). Full list of participating partners here. The last thing you want is to find out that an item is out of stock after you’ve braved the crowd (and screaming children) at IKEA.
If you’re looking for a specific item, check its stock availability on the product page on the IKEA website. You’ll be able to see how many pieces of the item are left, as well as which aisle to find it at. If you register for an account on the IKEA website (not to be confused with IKEA FAMILY membership though), you can also create customised shopping lists – very handy if you’re working within a budget. You know how you always see a bunch of bored-looking people sitting at the benches located right after the row of cashier counters? Well, there’s a reason why they look so damn bored. Certain items at IKEA are only available for collection after payment (the item tags will say ‘Contact staff for purchase and information’), which means you have to get an IKEA staff to place the order for you and print out a receipt. After you’ve paid for the item with the order receipt, you’ll need to get a queue number at the Collection Counter located after the cashier counters.
This is where the Great Epic Wait of All Time begins, as some poor guy in the IKEA warehouse has to lug all the stuff down to the Collection Counter. The staff usually say that it will take about 45 minutes for your items to be ready for pickup, but it can sometimes take up to 2 hours (yes, seriously). If you really need to buy that item, get a queue number then go across to Anchorpoint Shopping Centre to kill some time. Alternatively, you can opt to send the items straight to your home via IKEA’s Home Delivery service, but the extra cost is really only worth it if you’re buying a new bed or something. Don’t quote us on this, but the peak hour crowd generally seems to be from 5 – 7pm on weekdays and after 12pm on weekends. If you don’t have the luxury of heading down to IKEA on a weekday afternoon, try to get there at 10am (when the store first opens) on the weekends instead. This is especially so if you buy items that need to be collected after payment, because weekend peak hours = torturous hours of waiting among screaming kids and other impatient customers.
IKEA doesn’t provide free plastic bags, so bring your own bag/box to carry your purchases. If you don’t have one that’s big enough, you can buy one of IKEA’s (reusable) carrier bags for 90 cents. IKEA does provide newspaper and string to wrap fragile items though – the wrapping station is located just after the cashier counters. This one is more for the ladies – If you’re planning a walk-in wardrobe on a budget, IKEA’s PAX series is the way to go. Use the handy PAX Planner to explore the different configuration options (Shelves, rails, racks or drawers? The possibilities are endless!) and plan a shopping list. If you want more tips on creating your own walk-in wardrobe, read this.I needed more storage in the apartment, because I hate crowded, poorly organized closets. I like to see my clothes and regularly used stuff at once, and find it very frustrating to have stuff piled high. I also liked the idea of a raised bed, thinking that would create some separation between the “bedroom” and “living room” portions of my one room.
The sliding doors are another hack-in-progress, more on them later… So I doodled a bit (drawing’s not my strong suit, as evident above!) and came up with something that I liked. Originally I thought to incorporate some kind of a bookshelf to act as a rail so I wouldn’t fall from the bed, but pretty soon I realised this wasn’t going to be necessary. I haven’t fallen from my bed since I was 4 or something… It also looked nicer without the railing. Then I sketched it up with the measurements I knew I would work with. I had already decided to build the base out of Ikea kitchen cabinets and doors. I’ve seen a lot of raised beds in Ikea Hackers and elsewhere in the net, and the cabinet versions seemed to end up looking the nicest. They also played together with my new kitchen, helping to make the small space coherent and calm. Altogether there’s nine cabinets. Four 80 cm wide ones: 2 in the front and 2 in the back. There’s one 60 cm wide cabinet on the back, since the back wall is 230 cm and 60 cm was the widest that would fit.
And then there’s four 40 cm wide cabinets: one in the front and three in the end. All of the cabinets rest on a simple wooden footing on the floor, but nothing is attached to the floor or the walls. The weight of the unit with the bed on top is plenty enough to keep it in place. I put loads of big felt pads under the footing to keep it from scratching the floor, in case I want to sell the place later. I’m not sure those are necessary, but they’re there now… I even remembered to paint the lumber footing before laying it on the floor, so I didn’t have to paint it in the spot! The cabinets are attached to the footing and to the adjacent ones. Then I built the inner structure, adding lumber to hold most of the weight of the bed and to rigidify the part with no cabinets. The big pieces of lumber are on 2 corners of the bed and the cabinets and smaller lumber hold the back side of the bed. I also added 15 mm plywood on top of the cabinets to give them a nice finish and to keep with the theme of the kitchen (and to make the top level, where they’re not visible).
Only the parts that are visible form under the mattress are treated – yes, I’m lazy. My bed is a box spring -type bed (the kinda mattress with a built-in wooden frame, they don’t seem to sell the exact same type at least in the States) from Ikea and I attached it to the cabinets and the plywood with L-brackets. That way I didn’t need to build a “roof” to my storage space: the mattress forms the roof. I just made sure to measure the base so that the mattress covers the opening! A quick search didn’t come up with a tutorial on how to shorten the cabinets for the steps, so I’m thinking of doing one. But since I didn’t take pics the first time I did these, it might be a while… Basically, I just sawed the sides of one 40 cm wide cabinet into two and drilled new holes to correspond to the required bits to assemble the cabinets. To someone with a bit of DIY experience it was pretty straightforward and easily figurable just by looking at the parts and how they were supposed to fit together. O
f course I needed 2 cabinets for the hack (to have enough top and bottom parts), but I didn’t need to use the sides of the other cabinet. I also got around with just 1 door for these shorter ones! I left the 80 cm wide middle cabinet open (no backing!) to form a doorway into my storage space. To keep it looking uniform I only used the 40 cm wide doors. Most of the plywood is attached with screws from underneath, but the smallest step was so low that it was easier to glue the cover piece on it. Oh, and then I put some thick cardboard covered with DC Fix (a semi-permanent plastic film/tape) over the end piece on top of the steps, to cover the hole there and make it look nice. That’s just attached with double sided tape and seems to be holding up fine. And I even have a light under there, to make it easier to rummage for what I need… I think it turned out pretty nifty, and it’s definitely great to have so much storage! It makes me happy just looking at it – there’s nothing quite like the feeling of a job well done!