I heart Ikea usually. We have one less than 30 minutes away, and I pity you fools who drive 4 hours to go to one (you’re not fools- I would probably do the same thing). Sure, some of the crap is, well, crap, but a lot of the time you can get decent essentials for el cheapo.

A couple weekends ago, we totally went through the second bedroom. This happened:

That’s right, Stan transformed into Niecy Nash and kicked my butt until I got rid of stuff. Then we went to Ikea to buy more stuff to hold the stuff I kept. Ah, stuff.

Anyway, I was delighted to find these inexpensive but sturdy Kasset boxes, which the Ikea employees assured us were for holding hanging files. I didn’t want to spring for an actual file cabinet, and these are cute, so it was the perfect solution.

Or so we thought.

Look at it there, looking so innocent.

“Yes, I’m here to hold your files! See, I have cutouts for hanging file holders and everything! Yay! Love me!”

I don’t love you, Ikea box. You are a major disappointment.

How do you explain this???

We even bought the stupid hanging file holders from Ikea (which was a dumb move in and of itself- they are way cheaper at Office Depot!). And don’t tell me that the box is for legal size- it’s not! Legal is 14″, and letter is 11″. This box is the uglier sister of a letter size box at an awkward 11.75″ or so.

I’m glad Ikea is only 25 minutes away and that Stan and I enjoy spending lots of extra time in the car together, because I put these sorry excuses for file boxes right back in the car and demanded a refund (and by “demanded” I mean “shyly placed the huge embarrassing failure box onto the returns counter and waited patiently while the guy inspected, re-inspected, suggested it may be for Legal size, offered to give me store credit, then changed his mind and gave me cash because he was embarrassed to work at an establishment that engineered such an asinine product”). So yeah, I got my refund, bought a few more magazine boxes (which are actually useful for holding magazines and magazine-sized objects), and proudly skipped the cinnamon rolls. Ikea victory!

As for the final solution for file holding, I broke down and bought a cute little file box from Office Depot for all of my 2011 papers, and stashed the old ones in some old plastic file boxes I had and hid them away in the closet because they’re not too attractive.

This is how the room was looking after we de-Hoardersed it, but before we got some new boxes to hold the stuff that’s just stuffed on those bottom shelves. I think I have a hard time with “styling” bookshelves, because I have too much stuff that I want the bookshelf to hold. Styled bookshelves are awesome, but a vase/picture frame/other trinket takes up the space of lots of books! Maybe that just means I need two bookshelves…