DB design little or too much data - mysql

Question

I'm currently working on a little project that uses MySQL. However I'm struggling with the database design. Currently I've come up with 2 designs, one stores more data but is actually the way I want it to be, however this way makes it really hard to work with the data. The other way is I think more basic and simplifies a lot of things but stores less data.
Design 1
Example data items table
id
description
time_created
1
Car
2021-04-17 17:30:00
2
Bike
2021-04-17 17:30:00
Example data user_items table
id
user_id
item_id
time_achieved
1
1
1
2021-04-17 17:30:04
2
1
1
2021-04-17 17:30:03
3
1
1
2021-04-17 17:30:17
4
1
1
2021-04-17 17:30:22
5
1
1
2021-04-17 17:30:34
6
1
2
2021-04-17 17:30:42
7
1
2
2021-04-17 17:30:54
Design 2
Example data items table
id
description
time_created
1
Car
2021-04-17 17:30:00
2
Bike
2021-04-17 17:30:00
Example data user_items table
id
user_id
item_id
count
1
1
1
5
2
1
2
2
Basically we have items that can be anything, they include a description to specify what they actually are. A user can collect items (a lot). These are stored in the user_items table which contains a FK user_id and item_id to the users and items table. The users table is left out for simplicity.
As you can see design 1 stores a lot more rows for the user_items table, this allows us to add more information (time_achieved and more) per item that a user achieved. However this results in more rows and probably a harder time queriyng. Design 2 on the other hand simply adds a count column to determine how many items the user has, but this is very limiting because we cannot add more data (achieved time..) per user_item.
I'm not sure if design 1 is the right and only design for what we want to achieve. Basically we really want to store additional metadata per user_item but I just don't know if this is the right design since it quickly fills up the database. Does anyone have a suggestion/idea for an alternative design which stores less data than design 1 but still allows to add more info per user_item?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Does anyone have a suggestion/idea for an alternative design which stores less data than design 1 but still allows to add more info per user_item?
Design 1 should work.
This design will also work but quickly fills up, more efficient.
id, item_id,Item_des,Item_qty,user_id,username,time_created all in one table.
some of the values will be repeated.