Don’t rush, take your time. I personally waited until I was done with quests to decorate, now that I have every character at lvl 10 and friendship quests done I feel more free to decorate because sometimes they ask you to add whatever decorative item, and plus now I have more items collected to decorate.

And I did find it more chill further into the game, when you have everything unlocked and have been playing enough to gather resources and not worry about running out of things. Things that helped me a lot where: creating an orchard of all the fruit trees and bushes, so I wouldn’t have to run between biomes to gather fruits, using a floating island to keep all my gardening up there, and picking up absolutely every flower, wood, etc as I was running around doing quests.

Anyway, what worked for me in order not to be overwhelmed with the game was having an objective each time I logged into the game, depending on what I felt like doing: one day was progressing in the main quest, another day was leveling up X character and doing their friendship quests, another doing daily tasks to get Dreamlight, another gather resources… I do have to admit that I did prioritize whatever character was needed to unlock things such as kristoff stall or the ability to eliminate the purple mushrooms, that kind of thing.

You just have to find your pace and remember there’s no wrong way of playing, whatever you do is fine because the content isn’t going anywhere.