As it Turns Out, Stress From Assembling IKEA Furniture is Universal

We’ve all been there: You’re assembling a brand new piece of furniture from a recent trip to IKEA, and voila! It is completed. It is a stylish, modern bedside table, outfitted in a magnificent mahogany hue. It is perfect. It is sensational. But, wait. Why is there a considerable amount of surplus screws and nails strewn around the floor? And, wait. Why can’t the top drawer open properly without a forceful pull? Did you miss a step? Where did you leave those instruction pamphlets? 

Enter: Furniture assembly stress — a universal phenomenon that, according to a report, transcends countries.

HouseHoldQuotes looked into this flat pack fury in a new report, examining nearly 50,000 IKEA-themed tweets to determine which countries experienced the most ready-to-assemble furniture stress. The report also determined the type of furniture that caused the most frustrations. Below are the key findings, as well as an interactive map with more detailed insights into each location.

Through geotagged tweets, HouseHoldQuotes determined that Icelanders tweeted most (64%) about IKEA and indicated furniture assembly stress. Iceland is followed by Russia (Moscow) and Canada (Quebec) in a joint second place, both of which with 60% of tweets that lamented assembling furniture of some kind. By comparison, Sweden, the homeland of the Swedish furniture company, came in as the sixth most-stressed country (38% tweets). 

So, which piece of furniture specifically caused the most use of obscenities during assembly time? Sofas, according to the report, with about 51% of IKEA sofa tweets displaying the most agitation. Sofas were also followed by nightstands (49%), dressers (48%), cribs (49%), bookcases (44%), and cabinets (34%). 

HouseHoldQuotes also looked into how men and women, respectively, fared in assembling the furniture. The report found that men tweeted about IKEA stress about 40% more often than women did overall, revealing that women were better equipped at keeping their cool. In any case, assembling furniture can be an arduous, stressful task. Some tips? Simply take your time, look into assembly services if it becomes too stressful, or perhaps even consider some foldable furniture that doesn’t require assembly.