Furnishing my first home taught me that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful

SINGAPORE – You never know just how many things you need to buy for a house until you’re furnishing one for the first time.

As a first-time flat owner, I was overwhelmed by decision fatigue over the sheer number of furniture items or appliances I had to buy. Fridge, washing machine, microwave oven, sofa, dining table, chairs – would it ever end?

I had thought, for instance, that choosing a coffee table would be a piece of cake.

I quickly realised how wrong I was. Before I knew it, I had spent several nights scrolling through Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao until 1am, with no idea of what to buy. There are hundreds and hundreds of coffee tables online, with a wide range of prices. Did I want a round table? A rectangular one? Did I want a table with storage or one with wheels? I was really spoilt for choice.

It has been a four-month battle but I have learnt the hard way how to get through house furnishing on a limited budget.

First, don’t spend too much time looking at each piece of furniture or appliance – just shortlist three items as quickly as you can and narrow it down to one on another day.

For the coffee table, I decided there will be no such thing as a perfect one, and once I figured that out, it became easier to keep to a few possibilities before eventually deciding on a winner.

Second, as much as I wanted to achieve savings when buying furniture and appliances, I learnt from my friends’ horror stories of cheap Taobao furniture falling apart in one month that we should not make price the only factor to consider. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. It may be tempting to save a few hundred bucks now, but it’s better to spend more on a fridge that lasts than a cheaper one that might give you problems down the road.

And I did manage to save some money now – by remembering to utilise the resources available. To offset the costs of electric appliances, my husband made sure to use our climate vouchers that shaved hundreds of dollars off the total cost of a fridge and a washing machine.

The third way is to sit down and really think about what a home means to you.

At first, I was conflicted, as many of my friends doing renovations had opted for an interior designer to do up their houses. I thought that it was the norm and that I was doing something wrong by choosing to design our apartment’s interior ourselves.

But an interior designer comes at a hefty cost, starting from at least a five-digit sum, and no one will know what you want in your home better than yourself. Everyone has different needs for a home. Rather than following the current trends of having space-saving and multi-usage furniture that could break with wear and tear, I wanted a home that catered to my needs as well as my husband’s.

My husband chose to invest in soundproofing our master bedroom, as he is a sensitive sleeper. As I love watching dramas and K-pop variety shows, I prioritised having a large TV set in the living room over getting a fancier dining table.

The biggest lesson I learnt from furnishing my apartment was that it’s okay to buy something that is “good enough”. Putting pressure on myself to make the absolute best choice and get the most bang for my buck would invariably end up making me disappointed and depressed.

My husband and I also managed to take some of the stress off by spreading out timewise the purchase of the furniture and appliances instead of trying to get everything all at once. This certainly made the whole process a lot more manageable, as the choosing of the more costly furniture can result in a lot of pressure.

In the end, our furniture costs came up to about $10,000, which was well within the budget we had set for ourselves. It made up for our renovation costs going slightly above budget at $80,000.

Looking back, the whole experience of furnishing our first home turned out to be much more than just buying things.

Every decision, from the size of our coffee table to the colour of our sofa, contributed to teaching me that a home doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful – it just has to be a place where you feel contented and relaxed.