'Snappy' New IKEA Furniture Could Save Your Marriage

Hate assembling IKEA cabinets and shelves? The Swedish furniture giant has heard your cursing and is launching a line of furniture that snaps together "like a jigsaw puzzle," Dezeen reports. The secret is a ribbed joint called a wedge dowel that comes pre-installed and eliminates the need for tools and all those tiny fittings the company admits drive many customers crazy. (See how it works here.) "We see some challenges in the time and interest," supply manager Jesper Brodin says. So the company decided to experiment with furniture that clicks together, no glue required. It took Brodin 3 minutes to assemble a table that he says used to take him 24 minutes. The wedge dowel made a test run in two lines of products in 2014. It was added recently to the Lisabo table, with plans to expand it to all IKEA lines, though some products will continue to require assembly.

Another advantage: the new system is "actually better, to be honest," Brodin says, because it stands up to frequent disassembling better than classic IKEA fare. It may also save your marriage. Building IKEA shelves with your partner can trigger multiple deep-seated issues, an expert previously explained to Quartz. One entertainment unit is so hard to build that one therapist dubbed it "the divorce maker," per the Wall Street Journal. But Brodin points to a more practical application. With so many divorces these days, he tells Dezeen, "if you get kicked out [of your house] in the morning you can reassemble your table in the afternoon." (IKEA begs people to stop sleeping in its stores.)