I just love it when a person See's a reality in a new & somewhat truthful light. It seems the Author has hit the nail on the head, realised how much the consumer has been taken for the sucker & has now taken a constructive roll in bringing others up to date. I say, Well done! A few little glitches have happened over the years since Stephanie's mom bought a vacuum. We did find mass production & along with that came employment & along with that came the disposable society in order to maintain the increase in population & ongoing job creation.

However, I totally agree with Stephanie, that the material these things are made of, need to be revised & more than likely, 'RE-INVENTED'. The disposable society is not green orientated. It kills wild life & creates many illnesses & diseases which add to the national health system & yes Ikea & Wal-Mart know that better than you think.

Sometimes a poorly thought out example undermines an entire argument. when I opened a small used book store I fitted the entire shop out with Ikea's Billy shelves. Nine years later, after holding many thousands of books, boxes of ephemera and the like, I closed the shop and was able to sell the shelves for about 1/3 of what I had originally paid for them -- so well had they held up. I thought that was pretty good value.

Does any one else remember that the great "liberal" who almost became our first woman POTUS was on the board of Wal-mart for six years at a time when it was moving away form its original values and becoming what it is today.

Nice 'n' "inside" fluff piece on J Crew's CEO on smiling sun- drenched corporate CBS Sunday Morning Show. No mention of where the favorite clothes of the First Lady are made, and by whom, and how. And, onshore,no mention of New York lay-offs and benefit reductions. There is the possibility of a good piece of journalism on this company, one would think. Maybe not so fluffy. Ellen Ruppel Shell and Stephanie Zacherek, are you there?

The author offers no concrete evidence that Ikea is doing anything evil. The main critique is that Ikea products are cheap and not durable and don't have to potential for sentimental value or being passed down. Oh Man I Never Thought Of That!! DUH! Everyone would like to have high quality, hand crafted, hardwood furniture. They ONLY buy Ikea because it's cheap, not because they don't value good craftsmanship! Good craftsmanship is the easiest thing to value- It's so obviously good when you see it and feel it. You don't need a degree in literary theory to come up with that one. But hey, here's an idea. If you want hand crafted, durable furniture made of hardwood and less expensive... Buy wood at the lumber store and make it yourself! You'll be so proud.

Morgan Spurlock's film "Supersize Me" showed how bad it can be for your body to eat at McDonald's all of the time. Books like "Cheap" can show how bad it can be to shop at Ikea or Wal-Mart all of the time. But who does either of those?

Right now I'm typing this response at my very old desk-- not sure how old, not even sure where it came from originally. Bought it cheaply off a friend. Lining the walls are three Billy bookcases from Ikea, which I bought because I needed bookcases now. If my luck is as good as ShandraL's, then they will continue to be used for the next ten or twenty years, however long they can hold out. Sure, I'd rather have ornate oak bookcases, but I can't afford them and these still suit me very well. The point is, hardly anybody acquires all of their stuff from places like Ikea or Wal-mart. We do it when we need stuff immediately or when we're low on cash, or both. That doesn't mean our appreciation for craftsmanship has lessened; it means that craftsmanship is a luxury.

Somebody back-thread asked where college students are supposed to find stuff for their dorm rooms without going to Target or Ikea-- are their shelves supposed to be made from cinder blocks? It's a good point. Craigslist and garage sales are great, but it takes time to find what you're looking for in those places and time is what most students haven't got.

If the argument is that we're contributing to harmful environmental practices and abuses of human rights by shopping at certain places, fine-- I certainly want to be a more ethical consumer. But I'm not going to feel guilty about my aesthetics, because not everybody shares the same priorities there. People are going to spend more money on things that are important to them, things that they feel need to be of high quality, and that varies from person to person. My kitchen knives need to be of high quality; my shower caddy does not. For other people it might be different, and there's nothing wrong with that.

When I was a student, my budget was meagre. I couldn't afford even the cheap stuff which was junk or shoddy, anyway. Here are some ideas I picked up or created: Go to Lowe's or similar; they have lots of free pamphlets on color choices, and furniture placement; you can ask them foolish questions, too!

Thrift/charity stores, estate/garage sales, E-bay, & Goodwill are all great sources for used, quality but inexpensive furniture. Quality "re-upholstering"can be done with slipcovers (surefit.com).

Bookcases can be made with planks of wood held up by blocks of concrete or brick, but a classier look is to use a decorative corbel. You can get them in stone, but more inexpensively in wood but then you'll need to Gorilla glue them to a brick if you have heavy objects to hold up. Corbels glued to plain bookends can make classier bookends. Canopies can be made with purchased curtain panels and dowel rods--or cheap cotton bedspreads thrown over the dowel rod frame. Classier is to use Roman columns or plinths--flat columns--as your frame. If your canopy doesn't need a top, purchased panels gathered at the corners and tied back look very nice for very little money. Pine furniture can be refinished to look like anything; Gary Lord's book on Faux Painting is informative & makes it easy! I have lots more ideas, too!

You have to have the time and most people don't which is why they buy the cheap stuff. The methods above take at most a few hours--its amazing what a staple/glue gun, paint & slipcovers can do! If you sew, the possibilities are nearly limitless!