There are a few things in life that mark beginnings. There is the time when you move out of the house and strike out on your own. There is marriage and the birth of your first child. Also making the list are your first car, your first real date, your first real job, and your first day at university.
Life is full of beginnings. One of the bigger beginnings happens when you move into your first home. Among the things that make it so big is the bill. A house is one of the most expensive things you will ever buy and represents the most debt you will ever carry.
Your first house does represent one of the easiest moves you will ever make because you will not have much to move. You haven’t lived long enough to collect a lot of large and meaningful pieces of furniture.
What you do have can be easily handled by companies like Allied Van Lines or any of the major moving services. You will want to be particular about the mover you choose if you have special moving needs such as fine art, cars, and unpacked fragile pieces. The better companies can handle things of that nature more reliably than discount movers you never heard of.
Now that the moving truck has moved on, you are faced with a lot of tasks and a lot of boxes. Here’s what you should do next:
Completely Unpack
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is just to order a pizza and leave it all for the next day, which usually turns into the next week, and so one. Once you start putting it off, it becomes easier. And the job just gets bigger the longer you wait.
One of the perils of not unpacking is that you cannot find many basic things you need. So you end up buying duplicates of things and creating instant waste and clutter.
The best trick for making unpacking easy is to pack well in the first place. Planning goes hand in hand with packing. And when you plan well, you pack well. You can have the bathroom unpacked in a couple of minutes. Be methodical and get the little things into drawers and onto shelves.
Don’t stop until the job is done. Break down those boxes. And get them out of the house as soon as you can. Everything else you want to do becomes more complicated as long as you have unpacked boxes.
Plugs and Cables
If you are younger than the house you are moving into, it may not be ready for your electronic and connected lifestyle. Don’t try to bend to the whims of your new house. Show it who’s boss and run new plugs and cables where you need them to be.
You are better off paying an electrician to come install sockets and run cables through the walls where you need them than to plug in a bunch of multi-plug outlets. That can be quite dangerous. An electrician can assess whether or not you need a new breaker box to handle the load.
And don’t forget wifi. Your internet-connected toaster is not going to be able to send you messages if the walls aren’t friendly to signals. Get the wifi routers, repeaters, and extenders necessary to cover the home and yard with all the signal you need. It is easier to do all that when the house is relatively empty. So do it as soon after you move in as possible.
Give It a Good Cleaning
The last people in your home before you moved in were contractors, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and movers. Those are just a few of the many reasons you have to give your new home a top to bottom cleaning.
Those potato chip crumbs you didn’t see could become the invitation to all manner of unwanted pests. That one worker with the flu and fever touched every surface and left behind 17 unpronounceable viruses. The boxes you moved into the house may have been carrying spiders. Need I say more? I didn’t think so.
Make unpacking, wiring for your electronic needs, and cleaning be your first priorities. Once those things are out of the way, the toughest thing you have to do is pay the mortgage.
