Make Your Temporary House Feel Like a Forever Home on a Budget

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It’s a typical expat story. I was initially only supposed to be in Beijing for a few months, then I stayed a few more, and now I’m more than two years in, and what was supposed to simply be a footnote adventure in the story of my life has become home…for now.

I learned something important in the first three months I was here: Spend a little time and money making your living space feel cozy and comforting, no matter how temporary it is. Expat life is difficult. Expat life in Beijing can sometimes feel nearly impossible. While it is an incredibly rewarding experience that I would highly recommend, there are days when being an expat pushes me to my physical, emotional, and mental limits. It is incredibly important for your family’s mental and emotional health and well-being that they have a place that feels like home to return to at the end of the day. But when you will only be spending a few years in a place it can be hard to justify spending a lot of money.

I recently changed apartments and discovered a few Beijing life hacks that made my new apartment feel personal and cozy. I hope these tips help you and your family create a Beijing nest you love too!

Start by Up-Cycling

WeChat is your friend. People are always selling or flat-out giving away gently used things as they move on to their new apartment or next adventure. There are tons of second-hand buying and selling groups, including 2nd Hand Beijing Bargains, live LIGHTER live BETTER!!, Moving Sale and Buy, as well as the WeChat app Movin, which is a worldwide expat online yard sale where you can sort search results by country and region.

IKEA–No Assembly Required

I am shocked by how many people have no idea of the bargain furniture area tucked away in the back corner of IKEA. Here you can find floor samples being sold at massive discounts. So an RMB 3,000 wardrobe or couch is now RMB 1,000. Yeah, it’s got a tiny scratch in the back left corner, but that’s going against the wall anyway and you don’t need to do any assembly! Just don’t have IKEA deliver the furniture, or they will charge you to disassemble and reassemble it. If what you’re getting is small enough, pay for a six-seater DiDi and fold down the seats, or reach out to a local moving company and they will usually charge as little as RMB 100 to move a single piece of furniture.

Taobao

Obviously. The furniture on Taobao is extremely reasonably priced. I got a great bar height table that was perfect for my small living space, as well as a beautiful chair for less than RMB 1,000 combined. Be warned, though–you’ll have to assemble it yourself, and the bar cabinet I got came with no instructions, just a video link of someone putting together a piece of furniture that was not actually the same table I was working on… Shout out to my friend and puzzle master Paul for figuring it all out and not letting me give up five minutes in!

Make It Personal

Hang up some art! Get pieces that are unique and personal to you. I hadn’t realized how many of the amazing things I had gathered over the past few years of my travels fit into standard IKEA frames. The incredible watercolor I got in Seoul from a street artist and the leather carvings I got in Thailand pre-lockdown are just two examples. I also have the most beautiful origami postcards from my trip to Japan that have been sitting in a desk drawer for far too long. With a little creativity, a handful of 3M hooks, a hot glue gun, some craft paint, and a 20 kuai multi-frame, all these treasures are suddenly an original art piece!

I got my inner domestic goddess fired up using my printer and a few old boxes to create this next little set during the first lockdown. It took less than 15 minutes, and now the blueprints of places I have visited, lived in, and loved make for a great conversation starter when friends are over, as well as a reminder that we will eventually be able to travel and explore the world again. Get the kids involved too! An old IKEA print on canvas for USD 5 is suddenly cool and modern when finger paint is applied.

Hit Up the Antique Markets

Panjiayuan and Gaobeidian markets are filled with amazing finds that might end up being part of your forever home one day. A big piece of amazing local furniture or even just a few antique drawer pulls to update a modern piece will do wonders for personalizing your place. My old apartment had a wall-mounted coat hook that was so blah until I found a few smoothed-down shards of blue and white pottery that magically transformed it into a piece I loved!

Plants

One or two (or 50 if you’re me) well-placed plants will change your home and help purify the air in your apartment or house. You can find plants at Carrefour or IKEA, but I like to spend an afternoon wandering through the Wangsiying flower market. It has everything from orchids to lemon trees, as well as every sort of cut flower you can imagine at wholesale prices, and you can usually snag deals on pots and vases too. It’s a trek, but it’s worth the drive and the kids will have a blast exploring and running about among the stalls.

It might seem like more effort than it’s worth, but for me personally, being able to come home instead of just going back to my apartment is an absolutely indispensable part of making expat life…enjoyable.

Photos: Julie Wolf, Unsplashs

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