It recommends 2 people to assemble and I'm a 5'1 girl who assembled this by myself in under 30 minutes. It's pretty straight forward even if I did accidentally put one of the bars on backwards and had to undo the hex screws and flip it around - which was still fast. I'm not sure about those little S hooks on what I can use them for, but that's alright. It currently houses my microwave (on top), toaster (on top of microwave), keurig cup sorter (top right), ninja grill (bottom middle), cookbooks (bottom right), little scale (basket), and some other random stuff I think? I just needed something to help clear space on my counter and it worked.