With Chinese New Year just around the corner, grab a seat with new kid on the furniture block King & King Wong to help you keep it chic & cheap at home
I AM a lot of things to a lot of people, but no one has ever used the "domestic goddess" tag on me.

And for good reason.

The last time I tried my hand at ironing, I burnt a hole in the hubby’s trousers.

When I tried mopping the floor, I used the wrong detergent and nearly ruined the parquet.

But hey, I’m good at whipping up decent-tasting food from overnight scraps.

Just don’t ask me to use a chopper or to wash the dishes, please.

But I like to entertain at home, and sprucing up the place is probably my most therapeutic activity, next to shopping, of course.

I enjoy pottering around the house moving furniture, decorating special corners with holiday knick-knacks, filling up the house with different scents in different rooms, and so on.
So you can imagine what this shopaholic’s little storeroom looks like.

At this moment, it is filled with rolls and rolls of ribbons, a dozen bottles of aromatherapy oils, a set of acrylic table-top sculptures, new photo frames, fake cacti plants – and these are only on the lower shelves of my storeroom.

Heaven knows what I’ll find on the upper shelves.

And all these – the ribbons, oils, sculptures, photo frames, plants – were purchased from a store in Kuala Lumpur.

It was the first time I stepped into the premises of furniture and interior furnishing giant SSF.

It was like stepping into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Except in place of all that chocolate, there was irresistible furniture at reasonable prices.

I was amazed at the variety and affordability of all that furniture.

By the time I was done, I had bought enough to fill up five giant boxes which had to be flown back to Singapore.

Yes, I went a little overboard. But hey, that little furnishing nirvana wasn’t exactly in my backyard.

Furniture wonderland

And a place like that was exactly what Singapore needed.

Yes, we have our Spotlight and those little Bras Basah shops for smaller home items. We have the furniture retailers, IMM in Jurong, and do-it-yourself mammoth Ikea for the bigger items.

But nowhere on this island do we have a retail combination of both, and at such accessible prices.

Not until now, that is.

With the entry of King & King Wong into the market, we now have all the good stuff SSF has to offer, and right in our backyard.

King & King Wong, located at Nex mall at Serangoon Central, is a franchise of the Malaysian furniture wonderland.

Though it isn’t as big in terms of retail space, I still managed to shop around for a good two hours.

It’s just a 10-minute drive from where I live, and well, I’m think I may need another storeroom soon.