I tend to have my financial priorities straight. This summer, it’s been very clearly save up for office furniture, save up for the house deposit, and then start looking for furniture for the house, starting with a fridge and a bed. It doesn’t matter how many awesome things I see in between, I need a roof over my head in November, a place to keep food cold, and a bed.

That hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I would want for my house, though, and making a list so that when I’m ready to start dropping pesos, I’m not stopping at every shiny thing I see.

One of the things I’ve known from last summer that I really want is an IKEA Poang chair. This surprised me because I’m really not a fan of IKEA, but the Poang chair is absolutely incredible. It looks good. It’s light. It’s supremely comfortable. It’s very inexpensive. And it is the perfect chair for putting the lap back into laptop. I typed from one of those all of last summer and also during part of my time in Spain. I do prefer to work at my desk, but I sometimes like to take my computer to the couch in the evenings to do social or fun online things, so the Poang would be a better place to do that.

I doubted that I had a Poang in my future here in Mexico because there is no IKEA in Mexico. I would have to hope that an expat brought one from NOB or Europe, but accept that I would not get the combination I want, either a dark frame with bright cushions or one with dark fabric and a light frame I could paint a bright colour.

So what is a gal to do when a Poang chair with a light frame and dark fabric gets posted to her local garage sale site for 50% of the cost of that combination in Canada? Well, she makes an offer of 40% of the cost of that combination in Canada, of course. Priorities are one thing, but signs must be heeded!

Getting the chair was not without some drama. I showed up at the appointed time for the pickup meeting in Mérida yesterday afternoon and the guy was a no show. He was not responding to messages. I gave up in disgust after waiting almost 50 minutes, very annoyed because he’d said our deal was only valid if I came that day and I’d taken time off work to go.

Several hours later, he messaged me with a bunch of excuses that may or may not have been valid, apologised profusely, and offered to bring me the chair this morning and said that he would throw in a Pyrex dish since he knows I collect them (from past discussions on the garage sale group). I was still leery, but sent him the directions to La Barca (again, only a couple of blocks away — easy for him to find, plus I didn’t want him to know where I live).

He texted me this morning to say that he was on his way and pretty much at the exact second I expected him to pull into the hotel parking lot, he was there and my faith in humanity was restored. 🙂

It’s hard to see from the picture, but the fabric is like dark denim. I was expecting dark grey, but this is definitely more blue. It totally works for me and now I have to decide if the frame is going to be pink, orange, or turquoise… I’m leaning towards pink since it’s not quite the right blue to go with orange and I have something else in mind that will be painted turquoise. 🙂

So I got the chair, the Pyrex baking dish, and two very nice (and heavy) brushed aluminium tea candle holders that I like and will use out of this deal. At 65CAD, even with the wasted fuel yesterday, I done good on this one. 🙂