From searching for the perfect house to packing up all of your possessions, you have a seemingly endless series of decisions to make when you move, whether you’re renting or buying. But it’s all worth it once the boxes are loaded off the moving truck into your new place and you get to the best part: decorating.
Decorating is a chance to turn your new house into your new home. It’s an opportunity to express yourself and personalize your space. However, before you start hanging your pictures up or ordering curtains online, there are a few things you should do first. Here are four things to accomplish after you’ve figured out how much to tip movers but before you start to decorate your new house:
- Deep Cleaning
Before you begin unpacking boxes and purchasing all your new furniture, take some time to deep clean your house. You’ll feel more comfortable as you move in knowing your house has had a good scrubbing. This will also help you get in a good house cleaning routine from the very beginning and hopefully help make cleaning easier to maintain as time goes on.
Deep cleaning your home also represents something: a fresh start. Your new home is a blank canvas for you to work on. Enjoy the opportunity to wipe away the past and show off your personality while building your future. Fill your home with the atmosphere and life you want without any of the home’s baggage.
2. Stage Your Home
Maybe this sounds unusual (after all, staging is what you do before you sell a house), but staging your home can give you a great idea of what your new space will look like decorated. Take a few key items and build the room around them — for example, unload your couch and ottoman, and maybe include your favorite rug, but wait to unpack the rest of your living room. Having your personal belongings out can cloud your vision for what you want to do in your new house.
On the other hand, staging your home will give you the chance to live in this new space and to get a feel for how you want it to look without unloading everything right away. You may decide that your old items don’t work as well or you may simply feel ready for something new. As an added bonus, you’ll have more time to go through your belongings and a good excuse to wait to unpack everything.
3. Get Organized
When moving, it’s incredibly easy to lose track of your possessions and become completely disorganized. Before worrying about the “fashion” of your home, focus on its function. Do your best to get your home as organized as possible from the beginning; it will make actually living in your new house much more pleasant in the long run.
In addition, it’s hard to know what you need or want for your new space if you don’t know what you already have. If you start decorating without organizing first, things will quickly become cluttered and take twice as long to put in order. Once everything is in its proper place, then it’s time to start decorating your new home.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your new home looks like, as long as you’re happy with it. Others may try to tell you what you should do or dislike your stylistic choices, but remember that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. They don’t have to live in your home, but you do, so make sure you decorate your home in a way that you love.
Madison Ann Baker is a writer, Netflix-binger, and pop culture enthusiast who lives in Idaho. Literature and linguistics are her two passions, both of which she studied in college. In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her dog and binge-reading fantasy novels.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mabakerwrites
Contently: https://mabakerwrites.contently.com/
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