How to Settle Quickly Into a New Home
Get your home setup in no time
Moving: exciting and disruptive at the same time. The sooner you can transport all your belongings, unload them and settle into your new home, the better. Life’s too short to spend more of it than necessary unpacking boxes and arranging furniture! That’s why we’ve produced this short but incredibly sweet guide to settling into your new home quickly. Read on so you can organise yourself and get on with your life sooner after the seller or letting agency has handed over the keys.
An overview
Give your home a deep clean
Giving your home a solid scrub is a good way to freshen up your property and reset it. For some weird reason, it makes the home feel like it’s now yours! What odd souls we humans are! Even if the property has undergone some sort of end-of-tenancy clean before you move in, you still may want to do this and wash away the final traces of the previous occupants. Again, we’re just odd that way!
Update your address and transfer your utilities service providers
The Inland Revenue, the local council, your broadband provider, the TV licensing service, the DVLA, the bank, your energy providers… all those lovely beings will need to know about your change of address. That’s a lot of life admin right there. And by using SlothMove, you can update your address with a range of service providers and institutions all in one place. You can even get rewards for using the service. Bonus!
Store important documents safely
Organise your packing and unpacking
Labelling your boxes room by room before you move will help you to rip through your unpacking. You can then transport the boxes to the relevant rooms and crack on with your unpacking as you wish. You won’t have to move heavy furniture around so much or boxes in and out of rooms needlessly because everything will more or less be already in the room it should be. It also allows you to keep your old home uncluttered and, in general, spares you some stress when unpacking.
Create a priority list for unpacking
What are your priorities for unpacking? Which rooms make you feel most at home? Decide and then unpack these priority spaces first.
Children can find it harder to settle into a new home, so you may wish to unpack their things before anything else so that they can get used to their new living space sooner and enjoy a sense of continuity. If you want to cut costs, you may choose to prioritise the kitchen to minimise spending on takeaway meals. For a sense of calm, you may wish to start with your bedroom and get a restful sleep before you tackle the other rooms.
Start with your bedroom
After all the upheaval of moving day, you want to be able to rest well on the first night in your new home. Crisp, fresh linen and pillows ― they’re the way to go, we tell you! Minimise the amount of boxes in your bedroom on that first night, too. Then you can get some solid shut-eye before tackling the mountain of boxes that await you when you get up the next day. If you have children, however, we’d suggest unpacking their items first for the reasons mentioned above.
Unpack and arrange one room at a time
You might think it’s super efficient to switch between rooms when you’re unpacking or arranging rooms. But you’re wrong! Multitasking is a myth. Rather than speed things up, it slows them down. Not only that, but you won’t complete any rooms either. You’ll have several different rooms all in various stages of completion. How irritating will that be!
For the best results, concentrate on organising one room first, complete the job and move on to the next. Get ready for a wave of satisfaction to wash over you that multitasking wouldn’t trigger in a million years!
Get into your routine as soon as possible
Moving is disruptive and unpacking and organising your home to get it just the way you like it can take some time. Although you don’t have to rush through your unpacking if you don’t want to, you don’t want the move to consume your life. Clear the heavy boxes and the clutter. The sooner you unpack, the sooner you can return to your daily business.
Getting back into your routine quickly is important for you and the family. It illustrates to them that the moving process was merely a temporary transition and makes it clear that the new home is a normal part of your lives together. Not only that, but it takes the stress out of the transition for you and for them. Always a good thing!
A bit like travelling to a holiday destination, moving is one of those things that’s exciting but which, at the same time, you just want to get over and done with so you can start doing fun stuff. The tips above will help you to organise yourself when it’s time to unload all those boxes, allowing you to settle in at your new address more quickly and get on with the essential business of enjoying your life in your new home. Yes, sir, to that!
Sources
Find out more first time buyers guides here.
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