I love Canberra, but at times the lack of major shopping brands is frustrating.  It’s not like the city doesn’t have the median income to support it.  When it comes to cheap furniture purchases we have to head into Sydney and take advantage of Ikea.

It’s normally a great way to spend a day.  Three hour car trip in, a few hours shopping and a three hour car trip home.  Unless you own a station wagon, van or ute you’re limited in how much you can transport home without looking like…

At the moment we’re in the process of organizing our home, so one of the major things we need to organize is shelving for my vast collection of books and dvds.  We had cabinet makers come in and quote on getting built-ins.  The price of AUD$8,000 was a little steep, so we decided we could achieve the same thing with a few select purchases from Ikea.

Only one snag – how to get them home.

Today we headed into Sydney to checkout the range on offer and see whether it would suit our needs.  We’ve decided to go for a mix of Billy, Benno and Bonde which is going to result in a lot of large boxes that we have no way of getting home.

While in Ikea we inquired about their delivery service.  They have a flat fee of AUD$269 to Canberra.  Which is pricey, but when you look at having to hire a ute or van to get them back home it becomes a little more reasonable.  However, there’s a service in Canberra called Bring it Home.

Bring it Home takes all the hassle out of traveling to and from Sydney, battling with the hordes at Ikea and then having to try and find the products in their warehouse style filing system.  Their delivery prices is 23% of your order.  Which is, again, quite high; but with the products we want to get it’s cheaper than the Ikea fee.

So tonight I put in my order with Bring it Home.  I’m waiting on confirmation of my order, and the goods aren’t scheduled to be delivered until 17 October, which is working out well as we have to paint our living areas.  I can’t wait to get everything in order.  It’ll be so nice to be able to see everything in order and not packed in boxes and bags.  It’ll be sweet.