Review: BURVIK 15" side table by IKEA
★★★★☆
I have been living in the same apartment for many years. For reasons that are personal, emotional, ideological, philosophical, and deeply subconsciously instinctual, I find myself rearranging the furniture in my living space once or twice a year. I am as accustomed to falling into habit as I am repulsed by the idea of moving through life on autopilot. Regularly reordering my living room, to me, is a way of resolving this contradiction. At this point, I have come to terms with and also come to realize that there is no optimal way to lay out a room. At different times of the year it's brighter for longer, or the sun peeks in at different angles. Sometimes you're working on a project and need a table space for it, sometimes you want to take your meals at a dining table, and sometimes you need extra floor space. Sometimes you work from home and need ways to segment off the apartment for work & for pleasure, and sometimes you're out and about so much that it doesn't really matter what you come home to as long as you can sit down. Having your comfy chair in the corner facing the window hits different on day 1 than it does on day 1000. I love embracing these changes -- grabbing hold of the friction when I feel it and figuring out what my body and mind are telling me.
My current layout is one that I actually resisted for a while because it is intrinsically not static; there is not a forever home for each piece of furniture. Specifically, my big comfy chair sort of floats around, being rotated, being moved out of the way of my office chair when I'm working, or being slid over to the center of the room when I am watching a movie on the television. I currently really enjoy embracing these different modes on different days, and throughout different times of the day. When I'm done with work and tuck in my office chair and slide the comfy chair back in its place, as much as anything else it's a physical signal that the priorities of the moment are changing and it's time to turn my living space back into my home.
Naturally, it's nice to have a little table next to your big comfy chair. Living in the modern world there are all sorts of little items that you need with you -- remotes, phones, cups, napkins, keys -- and the small compromises you make with your living space to afford this can be one of those secret little killers.
I last visited IKEA before the holidays in 2024. IKEA is obviously a deeply complicated company: it is I would say dubiously ethical to have a furniture and home goods store designed to send all customers through an intentionally circuitous flow to maximize impulse purchasing in a time where just across the board people should be consuming less and living more sustainably. (Obviously, this is not to place onus on individual action to combat e.g. climate change and economic precarity.) With that said, it's a company that I have a bit of a shameful affection towards. I have a lot of IKEA furniture and goods in my apartment (although I am slowly trading it out for more "big boy furniture") and much of it has lasted over a decade. And it's fun as hell to assemble.
While I was walking through the aisles, looking at all the furniture that I don't need (but "hmm what if...?") they got me again: the BURVIK side table, it turns out, is exactly what I needed for my living room. It is a relatively unremarkable side table with one twist: it's got a big ol handle that comes up and around the top of the table so that it can easily be carried. For me personally it is the perfect height for casually grabbing and moving around. The small lip around the table means that small objects won't roll off, but generally the physics of it all mean that you can lift it and move it around without too much mess. The light gray-green also compliments my comfy chair nicely. It is, without exaggeration, the perfect piece of furniture for my dynamic living room with a mobile and impermanent recreation space. The last piece of IKEA furniture that made me feel this happy, this "nailed it", was probably the comfy chair that I am currently sitting in as I type this out. It has joined some hallowed ranks!