What to do After You’ve Moved

Two weeks ago we moved in to our new house!  Yay!  Now we are swimming in boxes… ugh.  Surely you know this feeling, from the last move you did.  I remembered our last move very well: We were 23, engaged, moving from small 1 bedroom apartments into {what seemed like} a LOT of space! We hardly had things to put in each room and I am pretty certain we were unpacked in a matter of a couple days.

That is not the case now.

We grew into our old house: finishing the basement, had our first child, and accumulating a lot of “stuff” along the way. As it turns out, it was a lot more “stuff” than I realized…until I packed it.  Every. Last. Box.

Over the last two weeks, I have completely unpacked, washed and put away every single kitchen item and linen in the entire house.  I am scared to see our water bill, but that certainly was a big start to getting settled.  Now what?

Today, I’m sharing some of my big take aways from unpacking and the first couple things you should do after you’ve moved.  

First, we unpacked all our daughter’s things and got them put away.  I prioritized her adjustment over anything else, so getting her room completely set up on day 1 was my biggest priority.  She has adjusted flawlessly, and I think that is largely due to us getting her settled first.

Getting the kitchen unpacked was also important.  It allowed us to start cooking in our house again and to get back on track with meal planning. It also has made the adjustment easier for our daughter, who just turned 3.

Next, we tackled a LOT of boxes.  I think I’m about half way through the boxes at this point, which means I probably have about 50 to go…not joking.

We were completely at loss with what to do with the boxes.  My husband was not into stuffing our recycling for the next 15 years, so we called the local waste management company to find out where we could recycle our boxes.  We have several brand new nice boxes we purchased for our move that we are giving to friends, but the older ones we had accumulated from family and friends and wouldn’t make it for another move went to the recycling center.  I highly recommend this!

Lastly, the manuals.  Oh the manuals.  Since we moved into a new house, there was no shortage of these puppies to organize!

For starters, they were extremely dirty, covered in plastic, and were overall completely unorganized and living in a drawer which was not going to work for me and my organized personality.  I tackled this project as anyone would: with a label maker.  

Using just a couple of supplies, I sorted the manuals in about a half an hour.

I took each manual out of the dirty plastic and separated the warranty cards from the manuals {which I gave to hubs to fill out and mail…he has to help too, right?}.  The manuals all got a label, and that label went in the legal sized file organizer, pictured above, that I purchased at Target.

This quick and easy project ensures we have the manuals easily accessible down the road in case we ever have any issues with any of our appliances.  

Here’s the end result:

Now back to unpacking! 🙂  Hope this helps the next time you move, or if you are just looking to get your current home more organized!  Happy organizing!

Wendy
Pretty Well Organized