Him indoors...

Gizmo, our Abyssinian Guinea Pig, now lives inside the house after concerns as to his quality of life in an outside hutch over winter escalated after rather a lot of rain & no chance to put him in his run.

In order to accommodate a decent sized indoor cage (1m x 0.5m x0.47m) we had to make some room and we decided to move a small bookcase and replace with shelves. A look in the Ikea catalogue came up with something that would suit the bill (particularly wide and reasonably deep shelves) but when we went on our Pilgrimage to the nearbyTemple of Swedish Furniture, we were disappointed to find that the particular product was not on show and had disappeared from the catalogue. After looking at most of the displays in the showroom/maze, we eventually found a shelving system in the bedroom area that was passable, if somewhat over the top.

Armed with Ikea pencil, tape measure and store guide/picking list, we duly noted where the components were in the enormous warehouse (it is on the price tickets) and continued around the maze towards the checkouts. The four components we required were located in three seperate aisles and on loading up out trolley, Karen happened to notice that some component parts for the actual system we wanted were on some of the shelves. I had noticed a "where is it" screen near the warehouse entrance so we went back to it and typed in "Journalist". Rather than give us locations, it advised us it was all in the Full serve Warehouse next door. We noted down the parts we wanted and went to the information point. As the one person helping appeared to be dealing with the query from hell, I went and found someone else near the tills at a helpdesk who explained that the info point couldn't actually initiate full serve orders and neither could he. However, he could check stock levels and all of the Journalist range was available apart from one shelf size which wasn't the one we were after. We then had to trudge back into the main showroom area in order to find someone in the correct area to initiate an order. (Fortunately, there is a short-cut from the warehouse to the entrance otherwise it is a mile of contraflow). We then discovered that the one item out of stock was actually the uprights, the helpdesk man had read the screen wrong!

By this time, David was getting a bit fed up and we decided to knock it on the head, pausing only to get one of their legendary last chance Cafe hot dogs that David always asks nicely for when we go to Ikea (The Exit Bistro, they call it). They are very cheap- £1 gets you a large one and a soft drink, free refills and you get to put on your own Ketchup or Mustard.

Interestingly, the main Cafe is now absolutely enormous, easily the size of Morley Town Hall Alexandra Hall. The trouble is, you wouldn't really want to go there just to eat; the Junction 27 area is gridlock city at weekends and just getting parked and though the massive store is stressful at any time of day or evening.

Anyway, we got some traditional wall adjustable shelving from B & Q and after a bit of DIY Gizmo now has a new home, as does the clutter that preceded him.