Two Pommie Sheilas: Vale Ikea’s founder, who gave us the ultimate couples test

‘No, no, no, that can’t go there, there aren’t enough of these little pins.”

“Look, I’ve built things before and I’m telling you it goes there. Leave me to it, I’ve got this.”

“But you can’t, the instructions show two blobby people. It’s impossible to do it with one and we were supposed to do this together.”

And so started our first argument as responsible adults. The culprit? The famed Billy bookcase, ironically the one piece of furniture we didn’t need when we traipsed off to Ikea to furnish our first rental.

Feeling very adult with our borrowed ute and catalogue of folded down pages, we arrived at the carpark of flat-pack heaven with thoughts of walking hand-in-hand and visualising our dream home.

But, the troubles were just beginning.

A good 45 sodding minutes we spent circling that damn carpark. By the time we stomped our way through those sliding doors, our excited smiles were already waning.

Then, there was the map. If you want to put a couple to the test, give one of them a map. If you want to cause a divorce, give them one with swirly lines, dots, arrows and no short cuts.

I’ve navigated in the passenger seat enough times to know this was not going to be pretty. By the time we made it to the sofa beds section, via umpteen display bathrooms and teenage bedroom set-ups, we were far from gushing about life in our new home and ready for a gin.

“What about this orange one?” I asked.

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t care,” he snapped back.

Enthusiasm officially gone, we made a snap decision to match our satsuma sofa bed with a hint of green — who said neutrals didn’t include lime green?

Another hour was killed deliberating whether the “Malm” (which is Swedish for ore, apparently) desk we’d chosen came in one box or two and which God-forsaken aisle it was in.

Domestic bliss was looking like sitting on milk crates to save us the fresh hell of getting out of that bloody carpark.

When we’d finally run our loaded trolley into a few ankles, drawing scowls from other cheesed-off couples, there was the counter.

By this point domestic bliss was looking like sitting on milk crates to save us the fresh hell of loading it all into the ute and getting out of that bloody carpark.

Before Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad died this week, his company motto was to create a “better everyday life” for customers.

Did our satsuma sofa bed and a drawer full of allen keys achieve that? Probably not.

But a character-building day in Ikea taught us a life lesson or two, namely that if your relationship can survive a trip around the store on a Saturday afternoon, you’ll do just fine.