I know that this is meant to be a blog about fundraising $5000 in 1 night, but I want to share with you a little story I like to call the Ikea Syndrome… this story isn’t exclusive to IKEA; it could easily happen with any DIY project – so this article isn’t intended to bag out IKEA. Now let us begin…
One sunny day my husband at the time and I decided that we needed new curtains for our bedroom. (Actually, I decided we needed new curtains, but I digress!) I figured that involved about five steps.
- Measure the window
- Buy the gear
- Hang the rail
- Hang the curtains
- Hem the curtains
Piece of cake! That would be such a simple project we could totally do it in an afternoon. Or so I thought…
In reality, the process of putting up curtains looked more like this:
- Work out what part of the window I actually needed to measure
- Measure the window
- Drive to Ikea
- Find a park
- Find the curtain section – this is Ikea remember!
- Find the right stuff with no help from Ikea staff as they are nowhere to be seen!
- Line up at the cash registers
- Load up the car
- Get home
- Find the drill, screwdriver and the other tools
- Open up the packaging
- Realise there aren’t any screws
- Look for screws in the shed
- Curse the messy state of the shed
- Go to the hardware store to buy screws
- Finally, start to hang the rail
- Think to myself “Huh? How does that work?”
- Quickly check the instructions
- Think “Mmmm, not really sure”
- Have a proper read of the instructions
- Think “This looks hard; maybe I should’ve hired a professional”
- Convince myself “Nah I’ll be right”
- Keep trying to hang the curtain rail
- Think to myself “This doesn’t work!”
- “It’s f*cked!”
- “NEVER AGAIN”
- “I HATE THIS”
- “WTF was I THINKING”
- Start a fight with my husband (even though he did nothing wrong!)
- Have a tantrum
- Scream, “I HAVEN’T GOT TIME FOR THIS. IT’S 1 AM I’M GOING TO BED”
2 whole days later…
- Think to myself “I can’t believe it’s been two days and this is STILL not finished.”
- “How do normal people do this?”
- “I’m not an idiot. It shouldn’t be this hard!”
- Google “How to put up Ikea curtains”
- Watch multiple YouTube videos
- Marvel at “Oh!!!! That’s what you do.”
- “I think I’ve got it.”
- Successfully hang curtains
- “FINALLY it’s done!”
- Give myself a high 5
- Look at the finished job and think “Actually, that looks a bit crap.”
- Decide, “I suppose it’ll have to do. I guess I can live with that.”
- Convince myself “Well at least it’s better than nothing.”
- Crack open a beer to drown my sorrows/celebrate my achievements
- Agree “That was waaaaay harder than it should’ve been!”
- Conclude, “Next time I’ll just get someone else to do it.”
But then, a few weeks later when the pain wore away… I said to my Husband “Wow we put up curtains in the bedroom – now let’s do the whole house!”
To which he stares at me in disbelief and says through tightened lips “NEVER AGAIN!”
Does any of that sound familiar?
I guess the moral of the story is that I severely underestimated the task of putting up curtains! At face value, it seemed super simple and straightforward, five steps to be exact, but in reality, it was so much harder! (47 times harder!)
But what does this have to do with fundraising? I hear you ask! Click here to read Part 2 of the Story.
