Hello! Welcome to my ‘second home’, where I've been staying with my siblings for almost 4 years. I came to Singapore for Uni and work, therefore I’m calling this place my ‘second home’. Being away from my home country, especially during this pandemic has inspired me to make the place I’m currently staying in as homey as possible. 
It’s not very hard for us to decide on the location of our home. We chose this place mainly because I have always loved places that are more zen, where you can see lots of greenery and parks. Although there are not a lot of food options nearby, I really enjoy the calming and relaxing feeling I get when I go home after a very long day of work. 
A simple layout that we are contented with! 
When you first enter our house, you will be greeted by our simple living room. Yes, we don’t have a dining area. Instead, we combine a small dining table along with an L-shaped sofa as our dining space. That way, we can also watch our favorite TV shows while we enjoy our food. 
We also have our bookshelf and TV console in front of our sofa. so we can just grab a book and lounge. 
Did you spot the little sleeping dog on top of our TV? 
This space is very versatile, I sometimes even do my work here! 
Next to our living room, we managed to create a space where we can put our musical instruments like keyboard and guitar (we even used to have an electric drum set haha). While this space can be used for our dining area, we decided to put these instruments instead as we enjoy playing music during our free time. 
Moving on to our kitchen area, there’s a sliding door that separates our kitchen from the rest of the living room. This will keep the cooking smell from entering the rest of our home. 
Here’s our cooking area. Although it’s rather small, it’s enough for us to cook simple meals and bake some pastries. Because we have limited space in our house, we decided to install a smart laundry system to dry our clothes. It’s honestly not an ideal place because it’s very close to our cooking area. Hence, we always wash our clothes after dinner. 
For our bedroom, my sister and I want to keep it simple and clean. We have a queen-size bed along with 2 stools that act as a bedside table. It’s pretty functional especially when the guests are coming, we can just use these stools for extra seats. 
It also serves its purpose to hold our skincare products, phone, and of course to display our collections of Sumikko Gurashi! 
Since our bedroom is pretty spacious, we are able to add a working desk that I share with my sister. It’s the perfect size for 2 people and it feels like I have a colleague when I am working from home. We also use this table as our vanity table as we store our jewelry in the drawers and use the extra space in the middle to put our makeup and skincare products. 
Here’s some of our watercolor paintings. We started displaying them on our wall last year to track our drawing improvements! 
We also pick a simple storage with the same color as our desk to store some documents, watercolor painting tools, and more. Since we live near a lot of parks and greenery, it tends to get too humid. So, we also have a huge dehumidifier for our bedroom. 
We also keep our journaling tools here. And of course, another Sumikko Gurashi collection again! 
We didn’t do much for our master bathroom, as we want to keep it very simple and clean. We only added some dried flowers and diffuser to keep it fresh and fragrant. 
Living in another country can feel a little bit lonely sometimes. Creating a comfortable and cozy home is one way to make me feel more at home. When you start filling up your space with things that you like such as drawings, collectibles, or musical instruments, you will feel the joy as you enter your home. For anyone reading this who are having the same experience as me, I hope that you can also create your ‘second home’ - a home away from home!
4 October 2023
