walk to ikea

I went to Ikea this week. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to kill some time and I was in the area. One of the best things about Ikea is that you can invade homes without it being a felony. Just walk into a room and plop onto a couch or go lie in the bed, all without the inconvenience of a horrified resident calling the cops on you. It's like a strangely specific theme park.

But like a theme park the rooms do look a bit strange, they are always shallow imitations of homes, a set rather than the real thing. It never looks lived in. When I was trying to learn to draw backgrounds I paid a lot of attention to what is in people's homes and what makes something look like a home. I ended up calling this stuff "Life detritus" or "Life crud", it's the stuff that eventually builds up in homes, those mismatched items that came from cereal boxes and happy meals, photos that are hardly looked at, fridge magnets that were a long forgotten gift, or large wooden spoons or the old women equivalent of Warhammer 40k miniatures. There is also the smell of homes, so full of the smells of living things like body odor, wet dogs and home cooking. It's like the opposite of new furniture smell.

I'm not arguing that there should be people living in Ikea to make the rooms more realistic. That would make it so awkward when I walk into a room and just sit in the couch. Theme parks are fun because they are fanciful and unrealistic.