Moving In Day

Part Four of Moving Your Home

Saturday, October 19, 2013
by JULI SHULEM

By this time, if you have been reading for the past three weeks, you should be well prepared for your upcoming move and hopefully ready to settle into your new home. You may have already moved recently and are in the midst of figuring out how to get settled in.

Once you are in your new place, you want to plan well so that your first few days go smoothly. Some rooms will go quickly, like the bathrooms, but others such as the kitchen can take an entire day just by itself. Since eating is on most people’s priority list in their home, the kitchen is a good place to focus right at the beginning. Many of the boxes you have will be filled with the hundreds of items to go into drawers, cupboards, and cabinets in your kitchen, so work on that first. Have your cleaning supplies ready so you can wipe down areas that may not have been cleaned properly. Have lining paper ready, as well, for any cabinets you may wish to cover before putting your dishes and glasses away. Enlisting some help here may make the job easier and certainly it will go faster.

You can also begin by putting away items that will go into built-in cabinets and shelving at the beginning, you can get rid of dozens of boxes right away, which will help reduce the overwhelm. Ridding yourself of boxes early on also prevents tripping over them to get to others. Put blankets, linens, towels, etc. into cabinets promptly as those boxes are big and bulky. Pot, pans, and appliances also are big and heavy and will have a definite place to go that won’t require too much decision-making.

If you have furniture that many of your items will be stored in, do those next only after you have your furniture in their designated location. Be mindful of what you are putting away and make sure that where you put it is where you will remember it being. The most logical place will make it easier to retrieve the item you seek later on.

Once most of your items are put away, you may realize that there are still things that you don’t want or need any longer. Plan and schedule to place those for sale or donate them as soon as possible so you can avoid having them clutter your new home.

Lastly, hang things up. Anything you want to put on the walls will be better off on the walls versus leaning up against it waiting for you to put a hook up. Schedule several hours—over the course of a few days is fine—to hang things up and get them off the floor. If you don’t feel you can do an adequate job, then hire someone who can and schedule it early. Remember that it doesn’t have to be perfect—and you can move things around later if you decide to create a different look. However, beyond other décor, it is the one step that tends to make a house feel like a home.