The Sixth Drawer

We enjoy going to IKEA. It's like going to the carnival, except more expensive and the products last a whole lot longer. Smiles leap to our faces when the bright blue and yellow of that great Swedish entrepreneur come within view.

We are sad that the closest IKEAs to us now are in north Jersey, Philadelphia, and Boston. Perhaps the only redeeming value to living in Pasadena was having an IKEA in Burbank. Now we live in rural New York, where the only time the adjective "Swedish" is used is to describe bite-sized gelatinous fish candy. Thus finding an IKEA is now both adventure and trek.

Earlier this year we had to go to Manhattan for my work, which provided the perfect excuse to "swing by" IKEA on the way home. Good thing, too: we needed prefab drawers for our then-only-conceptual bedroom closet. I did my spiffy calculations of how many drawers would be needed, found them in the IKEA showroom, drooled over other pieces of furniture that we don't need, and picked up the drawers from the warehouse output station. When we got home, I crammed the drawers under our bed, where they could rest undisturbed until the closet project got to the point at which I could use them.

About three weeks ago, after two months of construction, drywalling, and painting, I reached that point. Out came the drawers, one by one, to be assembled according to the uniform wordless instructions of IKEA engineers. The ease with which I twisted, snapped, and pinched them together would have made Henry Ford proud. One drawer . . . two, three, four, and at last five drawers stood in a Jenga-like tower while I screwed the slides into my newly minted, custom-made cabinetry.

I popped the drawers in with surgical precision, screwed the cover shelf into the unit, and fixed the whole kit and caboodle to the closet wall. I stepped back, admired my handywork, and took a deep breath in anticipation of the trim work.

Then life intervened--work, Gwendolyn care, surprise projects, et cetera. Before we knew it, Madison Vinyl had called to set up a time to come and replace our bedroom windows. Yikes! At eight o'clock one morning I slid all of our bedroom furniture up against the inside wall and rounded up the herd of dust elephants that apparently can procreate like rabbits. Madison Vinyl came, installed the windows, and left barely a trace. That evening I lifted the edge of our bed to slide it back to its usual home. Before I got six inches, my foot kicked something under the bed.

I dropped the queen-sized load and yanked up the bed skirt. There, its slender form grinning at me from under the metal frame, lay an IKEA drawer, still pristine in its box. The sixth drawer.

All that painstaking calculation to figure out how to get six drawers into the closet, forgotten on the crucial day! One drawer pushed too far under the bed, forgotten until a day too late to redeem its place in the Holy Grail of bedroom remodels. One do-it-yourselfer who feels like an idiot.

I said a few words that might have seemed ironic to the engineer who named the drawer "Komplement," and laughed.

"Hey, honey! Guess what I found under the bed?"

My wife tells me that we can use it later, when we make drawers to fit under the bed. And another bedroom project is born.

~emrys