I have become quite good at assembling IKEA furniture. I say this not to brag, but to lay the groundwork for my subsequent remarks. And you would do well to pay attention to these remarks, for they represent the key to unlocking your own IKEA-assembling abilities. Let me be your guide, and meditate upon the following.

The secret to assembling IKEA furniture (and by this I mean assembling it CORRECTLY, not just ending up with something vaguely boxy with zero 90 degree angles) is to forget you are an American, and adopt the mindset of a Scandinavian.

In short, put away your machismo, your testosterone, and everything you’ve ever seen in a Western. Become organized, attentive, dutiful, modest, and slightly effeminate. (It might occur to you that most women and some gay men will have an unfair advantage in this. This is true. Get over it.)

Open the Box

Let’s say you’ve been shopping at IKEA, and you’ve brought home one or more flat and incredibly heavy boxes full of pressboard. As soon as you have it laid out on the living room floor you will be seized by an irresistible desire to grab your box knife and/or multi-tool and gut that puppy. You MUST resist this impulse.

You see, unlike goods packaged for American purchasers, IKEA products are designed to utilize every single square centimeter of space in their boxes. This means that as you joyously run your box knife down the side of that box, you will be simultaneously gouging a trench in your nice new bookcase.

Think like a Swede. Fastidiously set your blade length to the minimum possible setting, and then delicately open the box by slicing down along one edge, where two sides meet. In this way you will have much less chance to damage the contents.

Read the instructions

IKEA products come with a detailed pictographic manual showing precisely how to assemble each piece of furniture, step by step. As an American, you will be sorely tempted to glance through them quickly, and then start slapping parts together as appropriate. This WILL lead to failure.

IKEA relies upon the fact that their customers, like any good Scandinavians, will carefully, nay, slavishly follow their instructions. By scrutinizing every single picture of every single step, the Swedish purchaser will notice that the side panel used in step 5, unlike the 13 other side panels in the box, has an extra hole in it. An extra hole that will become critically important in step 17, after the furniture is 96% assembled.

Be Gentle

In addition to patience, and attention to detail, you must control your gorilla-like impulses to drive every screw and attach every fixture with enough force to create diamonds from Kingsford briquettes. Either Swedish wrists are thin and frail, or no true Swede would be rude enough to turn a screwdriver with enough force to actually grunt with the effort. In any case, you need to aim for something just slightly beyond finger-tight. Ignore this advice at your peril, for excessive torque WILL result in splintered pressboard and cam screws driven so deeply that they simply will NOT engage with their corresponding cam locks.

So, go slowly, methodically, patiently, and attentively. Enjoy a pickled herring. Nibble on a krumkake. In no time at all your finished piece will stand gleaming, looking both terrifically modern and utterly out of place in your double-wide mobile home. There’s only one thing left to warn you about. Hubris.

Humility

Your average American male will mark every achievement, no matter how minor, by beating his chest, popping the top off of a beer, and bellowing “Who da MAN?!” at all and sundry. But a display like this after furniture assembly will surely offend the spirits of IKEA, which hail from a land where the men take a deep and abiding pride in their capacity for modesty (no, it’s true). At best, your new piece of furniture will spontaneously collapse. At worst: mange, scabies, impotence, and a pernicious infestation of tiny jovial red-cheeked people wearing red pointy hats.

No, the best way to announce that you have finished assembling IKEA furniture is to make a cup of hot, black coffee, take a sip, and quietly say “Well, I finished dat dere cabinet from IKEA. I probably put it together all wrong, but I reckon it’s good enough fer us, you betcha.”