Over.

And over.

You should do a video about Ikea.

Do Ikea next.

Ikea next.

You should do Ikea next.

Ikea next.

Ikea in a nutshell when?

Do Ikea please.

Next Ikea.

Do you guys honestly think I give in that easily?

That I just read all your comments and just make a video because so many of you requested it?

Am I gonna do that?

Yes.

Ah, Sweden.

The land of Fika, ABBA, PewDiePie, and of course, Ikea.

Now Costco and Ikea aren't too dissimilar in the fact that they're both gigantic warehouses, but nothing is more striking than seeing that gigantic blue building with that shiny yellow logo, repping the Swedish colours, Swedish flags posted outside the building.

In fact, I believe they should just take all existing Swedish embassies and move them into

Ikea's.

Founded on the 28th of July, 1943 in Älmhult, Sweden.

Okay, you're gonna have to let me off for my Swedish pronunciation the entire way through this video.

I can already see all my Swedish audience disappearing as I speak.

Anyway, founded on the 28th of July, 1943 in Älmhult, Sweden by 17 year old Ingvar Kamprad, then the first Ikea store officially opening in 1958, Ikea now have 474 stores worldwide across 64 countries.

So while at 17, Ingvar was starting a Swedish retail empire, I was unemployed, getting killed on Overwatch.

Now for any of you that are unaware, or have never had the chance to go, Ikea is a giant furniture wonderland.

And when I say giant, boy, these things can get big.

The largest Ikea in the world, in Pasay City, Philippines, is an eye-watering 65,000 square metres, which is actually the size of Sweden.

In fact, they're so large, the second you enter the store, there is a huge map of the entire building, as well as arrows along the floor that you have to follow around the store like you're playing some weird Swedish version of Bloons Tower Defence.

And although they have numerous safety measures in place to ensure you don't get lost in the frantic field of furnishings, it's a common fact that Ikea do not have a staff recruitment process.

No job interviews.

They simply wait for the weak customers to wander off the track, get lost, and become consumed by the store.

So walking into the primary coloured palace, you're met with all your furniture needs.

Now, Ikea predominantly works off a sort of showroom design, so as you walk around the store, there'll be these pre-made example rooms, like the ones you can clip onto your house in The Sims, that you're free to wander around to your heart's content, each full of various pieces of furniture that you can purchase individually, which sounds harmless on the surface and a good method, really, but when you're walking around the rooms alone, especially if the store is somewhat empty, it is the eeriest thing ever.

The rooms are so detailed, you forget you're in Ikea for a second and fall for the illusion, until you try to turn a tap on and no water comes out, or the fake plastic Ikea food on an Ikea plate sat atop an Ikea table that looks far too edible for my liking.

At times, I feel like I'm walking around someone's actual living room, like the spaces are so detailed and feel lived in, I'm convinced one day I'm just going to walk around Ikea and find my own bedroom on display, or I'll wander into a showroom and I'll just find a bloke drinking a Stella while he's watching the Premier League, then I'll go to leave and it turns out I wasn't in Ikea at all, and I was in a house in Greater Manchester.

But hey, I mean speaking of getting lost, I guess Ikea would be one of the better places to get lost in, really.

You're basically living in a 200 room house.

Also, important to note that Ikea has to be in the top 3 places ever to play hide and seek.

Not that I do that, of course, because I'm a fully grown man.

I play tag instead.

It seems that everyone is drawn to an Ikea at some point in their lives, to fill out their house with the Swedish craftsmanship.

It's fun walking around and seeing the different furniture they have on offer.

Ooh, that's nice.

Ooh, that would look great here.

And something I do every single time, without even realising, is a feat of human nature.

When you're in an Ikea, no matter how many times you walk past a sofa, you either have to sit on it to test the comfiness, or so you don't look like you're playing some sort of freak game of musical chairs, sitting around every single sofa on the store floor, you do that weird subtle thing where you lean to one side and push your hand into them to test the sitting capabilities.

Why do I do this every time?

Like I'm some sort of professional sofa reviewer, walking around with a clipboard, pushing my hand into sofas.

And it's even worse with the beds.

They need to put chains around those bad boys, because you damn well bet I'm lying on every single one of them, at any given chance, and rating them in a tier list on which one is best.

Then buying none of them.

It takes me about nine hours total to get around the store by the time I'm done violating all the products.

And how could I forget about the product names, an iconic part of the Ikea experience.

Ah, the Swedish furniture names.

Now whilst to the untrained, monolingual eye, it may look like an employee jumped on a keyboard, but the names do have logic to them.

Each product is a Swedish word relating to that type of product.

So outdoor products are named after Scandinavian islands, rugs are named after towns in Sweden and Denmark.

But to anyone that doesn't speak Swedish, the names sure can offer up a range of emotions upon first read.

Ikea is the only store in existence that can make common household products sound like warriors.

Kjellborg the Destroyer, Sirvallon the Mighty, Orjar Blomster, the grey bedspread, 150 by 210 centimetres for £7.

And certain products are named after Swedish names, so you can have a bookshelf called

Billy.

The Billy bookshelf.

You know, I personally think we should apply this system to every store out there.

I want to be able to walk into my nearest department store and buy a crowbar called

Derek, or a lawnmower called Russell.

Now most Ikea products are flat pack, a system introduced to Ikea in the 1950s.

So put shortly, you have to follow the Ikea instructions and build the product from scratch with the parts you're given.

Kind of like adult Lego.

Which seems easy in theory, but you lose one screw and the whole thing is a write off.

I'm so bad at constructing Ikea flat pack furniture that I'll make a mistake and just accept it.

And use the furniture anyway.

And I'll have people come round to visit and be like, why does this table have three straight legs and one that's forcefully drilled into the top of it.

And I'll sort of just play it off like, oh that's the design, it said that in the instructions.

That's the Gareth table.

Which is a great cover up and all, but it doesn't fix when you're alone and your flat pack fumbles start affecting your daily life.

I'll be eating my dinner and it'll just slide onto the floor out of nowhere because I read the instructions wrong three months earlier and one leg is three inches smaller than all the others.

At this point, my house is so full of Ikea flat pack furniture built wrong that it looks like I'm trying to host some abstract art show with various weird sculptures.

Now in life, there is often times where you have to make a decision.

What career path you want, your first born's name, what colour crop do you want to wear each morning.

And arguably, the most important question every individual needs to answer is which

Ikea stuffed animal toy you choose to own.

Forget the furniture, the stuffed animals are Ikea's best range of products by a mile.

There is of course, the big boy, Jungle Skok, the bear, that did the rounds on Twitter to the point where it sold out on the Ikea website everywhere.

You have a range of choices, the pig, the snake, the tiger, the panda, the wolf, the polar bear, the shark, but never fear.

If you struggle to decide, you can take this BuzzFeed quiz to decide which one closely relates to you.

Well I took the test, answered each question, like pick a favourite snack.

How does that relate to the...

Anyway, my results were in.

Blahaj, the shark, you're probably off enjoying the great outdoors, you're always on the move.

I've spent the last week, sat in front of my PC, writing a video about a Swedish furniture store and taking a BuzzFeed quiz.

Regardless, BuzzFeed had given me my Ikea stuffed animal of choice, Blahaj the shark.

Thank you BuzzFeed, so I headed over to the Ikea website and bought Jungle Skok the monkey.

Come on, I had to, it's a damn monkey, nothing against Blahaj, but look at him.

And if you want to take a break from all the furniture action, you have Ikea's other attractions, like the restaurant with the iconic Ikea meatballs, scientifically proven that when consumed, each meatball increases your Swedish heritage by 1%.

Or these huge billboards for cinnamon buns that state that this is not the actual size.

Like people think that Ikea secretly serve a giant cinnamon bun that they're storing in the back.

Somewhere that holds a soft spot in my heart, Small Land.

Now this place brings back memories of when I was a kid, so simply put, Small Land is basically a sort of play area that parents can leave their kids in whilst they venture into the Ikea labyrinth.

Now whenever I would enter Small Land, it felt like heaven, rivers of plastic balls, felt trees to rest under after a hard day of doing absolutely nothing, caves to explore in.

It was like an oasis, a resort, I could have spent hours in Small Land.

Now I will admit, after googling it as an adult, it didn't really live up to my memories, but I was convinced it was better than this.

Maybe it was shrouded in nostalgia.

Now when you walk around Ikea, you of course don't just pick up the pieces of furniture out of the showrooms and put them in your trolley, regardless of what one couple thought.

Instead, you note the little number down, and then when you've finally reached the end of the store, you've even made it through the jungle of the houseplant section, the maze of miscellaneous movables behind you, with your notepad of products scribbled down with an Ikea pencil, you're presented with the warehouse, towering metal shelves piled with flatpack fortunes, very Costco-esque in fact, then you simply find the products down the hallway of boxes and pile them in your car.

And finally, I thought I'd share some stories from the Ikea-burg.

Firstly, the Ikea monkey.

December 9th, 2012, Darwin the monkey escapes from a locked crate on a nearby truck, makes his way towards the closest Ikea, and in his forked shirling coat, just wanders around.

Or when New Jersey couple Shirley Stewart and Berkley Rashid Smith got married in their local Ikea, as it's where they met.

Or the strange phenomena sweeping fashion, the trend of making Ikea-themed clothing, or even using the brightly coloured 99p Ikea bags to construct garments.

I did indeed visit Ikea whilst making this video, and it's a great time.

If you've never been, or haven't been recently, I highly recommend it.

Walking around, the interior design skills of the showrooms genuinely does inspire you to spruce your own living space up, and a lot of what Ikea has to offer is some super high quality stuff.

And the meatballs were pretty tasty.

Just whatever you do, no matter how badly you need it, never, ever attempt to use a showroom toilet.

And with all of that said, goodbye!