I don't understand how you handle your furniture. Even the cheap ones can be reassembled carefully, but you need to handle it gently and slowly. There is a seco

I don't understand how you handle your furniture. Even the cheap ones can be reassembled carefully, but you need to handle it gently and slowly. There is a second hand market for all of it. The disparate experiences across people lead me to think that some people are unknowingly handling it roughly and quickly without much thought. Also, if you can afford to get better ones, get them. Although Ikea is already not the cheapest, we used to be lower middle class in Hungary and couldn't afford Ikea stuff and bought similar particle board stuff from no name places that was way harder to assemble and was less structurally strong. For all the hate it gets, Ikea is well designed for average Western European and North American students and young adults. Once you earn like an average American middle class family, you can afford better furniture, so if it's important to you, do it. But many people know what they are getting and are satisfied with the tradeoffs.