How to Adapt to a New Environment When Moving

The home moving process is all about change, isn’t it?

In most cases, change is good. However, sometimes the relocation shift can be so sudden and drastic that you may feel completely unsettled, disorientated, and even shocked.

Nobody said that moving to a new home would be a walk in the park. Or if somebody did say it, then you can be sure that he or she must have been joking.

As soon as you step inside your new home, the adjustment period will start.

Just how long does it take to settle into a new house and get used to living in a new city? Nobody could possibly know that.

Maybe except you, that is.

It’s never easy to adapt to a brand-new set of physical surroundings and social norms and still stay true to who you are and what you believe in.

Hopefully, the following practical advice on how to adapt to a new environment will help you get back on track as fast as possible in order to reclaim the leading role in your own life.

How to adapt to the new home

You open the door to your new apartment or house and, instead of sheer joy and excitement, you’re greeted by an eerie sense of unwelcoming non-belongingness.

In other words, you’re feeling unsettled in the new home. What’s happening?

The truth is that the post-relocation adaptation period has already begun.

• Use your new home as a temporary hideout. It’s okay to hide temporarily in your new home from the overwhelmingly unfamiliar and even strange surroundings. However, the entire hiding tactic should only last for a few days until you get your bearings. Eventually, you must go out from your hiding place and face the new reality head-on.
• Learn the secrets of your new home. How are you supposed to get used to the new home if that home is full of secrets? Exploration time! Do a careful inspection of the entire place, notice any visible signs of damage, check for water leaks, and locate the fuse box and the main water valve.
• Make sure your new place is secure. You won’t be able to fully relax in your new place unless you know for a fact that it is secure enough. You’re advised to change the locks on all outside doors. A burglar alarm is also an option, so consult a specialist. Check to see if all doors and windows close tight. Purchase one fire extinguisher per floor and consider installing smoke detectors in each room.
• Child-proof and pet-proof the new place. Adapting to your environment is only possible when you know that all the loved ones around you – persons and pets alike – are fine and taken proper care of. An unfamiliar home setting almost always hides specific dangers for small children and pets, so it’s your task to identify and eliminate all possible hazards for kids, dogs, cats.
• Unpack your stuff ASAP. Unpacking things that you know so well will introduce a strong sense of familiarity in a place that is still entirely strange to you. All packed boxes look the same and are rather soulless unless you open them up and start beautifying the space inside the home you just moved into. Unpack at your own pace to avoid stress and exhaustion.
• Arrange or re-arrange the furniture. A proven way to adjust to moving to a new place is to arrange your furniture pieces exactly like or very similar to how they were in your old home. That way, you can enjoy the familiar coziness of your former residence until the adaptation period is officially over and you get the courage to re-arrange your home to suit your new you.
• Clean up the new house or apartment. How do you expect to adapt to the new environment if that ambiance is not even clean enough to meet your standards? Before you even have the chance to learn exactly why you’re feeling unsettled after moving house, but after you’ve (partially) unpacked and arranged your furniture, use this Cleaning Checklist to give your new place a thorough cleaning to start things afresh.
• Make your place feel like home. The sooner you manage to make the new place feel like home, the faster you’ll go through the new home adjustment period. Arrange it just the way you like it, add colorful decorations and vitality, and don’t forget about the final finishing touches such as hanging photos and paintings on the walls and playing with light sources to introduce balance and harmony.

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How to adapt to the new town or city

Moving to a place you’ve never been to before can be an intimidating and even terrifying experience.

There’s the fear of the unknown – you just don’t know what to expect from the new town or city and you have no idea whether the new environment will be to your liking or not.

Besides, it’s too early to try to predict whether, as time passes, you will feel some sort of connection with the chosen home moving destination.

Speed up the new city adaptation by following these practical tips for adjusting to new surroundings:

• Explore your new city. The city you just moved to may look unwelcoming and even menacing simply because you don’t know it yet. Chase away that feeling of strangeness by walking out of your fortress and getting to know the unfamiliar surroundings little by little. Start with your neighborhood, and then expand the perimeter of your exploratory trips. Soon enough, you’ll notice how your initial perception will change with each consequent walk in a park, visit to a landmark, or stroll along the shopping streets. /8 Ways to Explore Your New City/
• Use your job as a shield. The reason for your home move may be work-related or you may have had a totally different motive to move house. Either way, a proven way to adjust to a new environment smoothly and painlessly is to focus on your job and thus have less free time to occupy your mind with sad and nostalgic thoughts. The steady income from your work will certainly help ease the transition into your new life chapter. Moreover, your daily contact and communication with work colleagues, business partners, or customers will shorten significantly the time you need to get used to the new city atmosphere. /Your Job Relocation Guide/
• Meet new people. Without a doubt, the best way to hasten the adaptation to a new environment is to meet new people and hopefully become friends with some of them. This make-new-friends concept is especially important when moving to a new city alone. One good to do just that is to throw a housewarming party after the move and invite co-workers, neighbors, and friends or acquaintances you may already have in the town or city. Another fool-proof way to meet and interact with people with similar interests is to pursue your hobbies, sign up for yoga or dance classes after work, or join various sports clubs.
• Keep in touch with your old friends. Post-relocation adaptation is about moving forward with your life. Sometimes that forward movement may be just one small step at a time but it’s still progress in the right direction so that you can adapt to the new environment. However, your own adaptation to a new environment will yield the best results when you keep and cherish your old pals and the meaningful relationships you had with them prior to the move. Now it’s easier than ever to keep in touch with the people you care about as modern technology has turned long distances into a lame excuse to disconnect completely from the people who matter so much in your life.

20 Brilliant Ways to Make New Friends When You Move to a New City

3 Bonus tips for adjusting to new surroundings

How long does it take to adjust to a new place? Adaptation is a process that takes time – you can’t expect it to be over in a day or two.

The truth is that a large number of external factors (city, home, employment, income, support base, friends, entertainment options, etc.) and internal factors (mental and physical health, current marital status, hopes, expectations, etc.) will play a major factor in determining how long you will need to feel at home once more (if ever).

Here are three additional tips for adjusting to a new environment.

1. Learn about the new environment in advance

Learn as much as you can about the new place you’re moving to – be it a small town or a big city. This is especially important when you’ve never been to your destination point before. Knowing what to expect from your future place, at least in general, may help you feel less estranged and unwelcomed right after the move.

They say that information is power, but when you find yourself in a completely new and unfamiliar environment, information equals survival. The more you know about a place, the faster you will get used to its foreign nature, and then the faster you will adapt to the new environment after the home move.

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2. Try to be nice to everyone

It’s supposed to be a small world but that proverbially tiny world will seem huge when you move to a place where you don’t know anybody. Still, it can be rather exciting to have no idea who you’re going to meet in the new town or city.

Whenever placed in an unfamiliar setting, you should stay on the safe side by being nice and polite to strangers because you just never know – the person you yell at on the street for no good reason may turn out to be your next boss. Courtesy is a quality that can help you a lot during your post-move adaptation period.

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3. Do things you’ve never done before

To rediscover your inner rhythm and equilibrium after moving to a new place, you may need to break the daily routine by doing a handful of things you wouldn’t normally do. The main idea here is to stop feeling sorry for what you’ve lost and concentrate on the things you gained when you moved home.

Remember that every time you lose something, you win something else. And since you can’t bring back your old life, it’s time to try to enjoy what your new life chapter has in store for you.

Make every effort to break the mold by seeking out new experiences. You may have lost your evening bridge sessions with your buddies, now it’s time to join a chess club in the new city. Is your new locale also offering great hiking opportunities? Horse riding? Rafting?

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

The Greatest MOVING CHECKLIST of All Time

Your biggest post-move enemy? Relocation depression.

Moving to a new environment can be the cause of manifestation of one of the worst side effects of the home moving process. Relocation depression (aka separation anxiety) is a strong psychological reaction to the loss of the old life where the familiarity brought comfort, which in turn brought peace of mind.

The moving to a new city depression is often tricky to cope with, and may even lead to undesirable results and possibly dangerous consequences if not handled properly. At times, a person may require professional help to break free from the strong clutches of that post-move type of depression.

Check out the typical symptoms of relocation depression so that you can identify its signs early enough to be able to respond adequately:

• Excessive sleep. You may be just too exhausted from the home-moving adventure. However, if you do find yourself sleeping 12 or more hours when you only needed 8 prior to the move, then that may be a troubling sign.
• Lack of energy. If you wake up rather tired and have no sufficient energy to get on with your daily routine tasks, then that could also mean you’re struggling with depression.
• No desire to leave the home. Are you terrified by the thought of having to leave your new home? Do you lack any desire whatsoever to meet and talk with other people, even friends? Post-relocation avoidance of contact with the outside world is an apparent sign that something’s wrong.
• Apathy. The state of not being interested in anything or anyone could be kind of fun for a few hours. Prolonged stints of apathy after moving to a new place – a place that waits to be explored and enjoyed – usually spell out T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Here you will learn what you can do to overcome relocation depression on your way to adapting to your environment quickly, and more importantly – trouble-free.

Ultimately, the best way to adapt to a new environment is to give yourself more time. Don’t be too harsh on yourself – you just survived a home move, didn’t you? It’ll take some time before you get fully adapted to the new surroundings – months, maybe even years.

The bad news is that sometimes you may never feel completely at home in the new city and inside the new home. And if that is the case, then moving back to the place you left behind may be the only option to keep your sanity and find again the joy of life.