A few months ago, I splurged on a piece of very nice furniture for my apartment. It’s called the Expedit, and it is sold by Swedish retail chain IKEA. In case you have never been to an IKEA store (they are scattered all over the US, but only in some of the biggest cities), they are truly an experience. They are huge, multi-story, warehouse-style buildings with massive amounts of home furnishings. At my local store, you go to the second floor first, where they have complete rooms and even apartment-sized areas laid out, with the square footage, so you know if it would work in your own apartment. There, they have all their furniture, furnishings, and decorations set up in such a way that you can see how a complete room would look. It really helps to be able to see all the packaged furniture assembled, so you know how big and how much space your furniture will take up.

Back to the Expedit. The way that Ikea can offer functional, attractive furniture so cheap is that they specialize in modular compunents that they can mass produce, package flat in boxes, and through in the warehouse area right before the checkout on the first floor. You will have to grab a big dolly and do some searching for it, not to mention spending a half-hour or so to put it together, and the Expedit is no exception. However, for $90, you can have the two-by-four, a great-looking piece of furniture in your living room or office, and for $160, the big four-by-four.

You probably aren’t able to have a traditional bookshelf in your home if you are pressed for space, because you shouldn’t be storing that many books in one place in the first place. That’s what libraries, the Internet, audiobooks, and half-priced buy, sell, and trade, bookstores are for (But that’s a different post.). On a storage system like the Expedit, however, the depth and height are greater than the traditional bookshelf, and you can store pretty much anything that you need constant access to. In my own apartment, I have books filling two of the cubes, a lamp in one, games and puzzles in another, and reference books in another.

There has become somewhat of a cult following surrounding the Expedit, and for good cause. If you want to see more pictures of the IKEA Expedit in action, visit the Expedit Group Pool on Flickr.com for over 250 action shots by users. If you want to find some more creative uses for your Expedit (or any IKEA product), visit the ikea hacker blog. Good luck with your Expedit!