It is a three-bedroom place in Capitol Hill that functions like a group house, with the roommates always moving in and moving out, 12 of them in six years, always nicking the coffee table on their way. That’s not a color, but it’s a color enough that if you’re picky about your blacks and browns matching, you can work it either way. What was a glass coffee table doing in a place nicknamed “The Frat House” anyway? So out he went, to Ikea College Park, and he came home with the Lack. There was screaming, hugging, shattered glass. When was it that the Yankees won the World Series? 2009? 2010? Andrew Paul can’t remember, but he knows that was the day the first coffee table was put to death. IKEA LACK Coffee Table, Black-Brown - $20 (Capitol Hill) As if it hadn’t been such an adequate plate holder for food that was a real, cooked meal, and thus, a victory.īehind each dull post - “fair condition” and “Please call, text, or e-mail” and “pretty sturdy” - there is a history: a story of a this-will-do coffee table at a what-to-do time in life. As if it hadn’t been such a reliable foot rest during sessions of scrolling on Facebook, silently comparing the new lives of college friends. Billy bookcases and Brusali bed frames, Malm dressers and Magnarp floor lamps, and nearly every day, a few Lack tables.ĭescribed as sparsely as it is designed, the Lack table is discarded on Craigslist for $10 to $20, as if its companionship during the disorienting time of 20-something-ness gave it no additional value. In October alone, there were 6,969 posts that included the word “Ikea” in the furniture-for-sale section. They’re the ones who are the most likely to change homes again and again, rotating through group houses, upgrading to bigger places, shacking up and breaking up, packing up all their stuff again and thinking there’s no point in bringing this coffee table with me it only cost $19.99.Īnd that’s how tables well-worn and nearly new end up on Craigslist. The District is packed with the millennials who gave the city its population boom. More than half of residents rent their homes, and according to 2013 Census data, 59 percent of those renters have been in their place three years or less. The median age of people moving into the city is about 26, and it’s 29 for those migrating out. Because in the District, moving is what young people tend to do. There’s no point in buying something nicer, its owners say, when they’re just going to move soon anyway. It is purchased at a time when life is as unstable as the cheap table will eventually become. And only $19.99 or $39.99 for the coffee table, depending on the size. At Ikea, “most popular” also means “most boring.” Plain. Lack tables are some of the Swedish furniture powerhouse’s most popular items.
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