You may have reached the safety of the new home (Congratulations!), but your house move won’t be really over until you take care of the most pressing post-relocation tasks. Then and only then will you be able to breathe a sigh of relief, thus marking the official beginning of the long adaptation period after moving into a new home.
The good news is that you’ve reached the final stage of the house move and now things should be easier, at least in theory, simply because you won’t have a set fast-approaching deadline like you had before moving out. That’s right, without a Moving day to breathe down your neck, you should be able to tackle all tasks at your own comfortable rate. Naturally, you’d want to complete those jobs in order of urgency and importance.
Read on to learn what to do after moving to a new state, after moving to a new city, and definitely after moving into a new home. The strange unfamiliarity of the brand-new surroundings is likely to overwhelm you at first, even confuse you to some extent, but the checklist of moving into a new house will be waiting for you to pick it up and get down to work.
What to do after moving? Here are all the crucial tasks that you have to take care of after you move house. Non-surprisingly, the very first challenge before you is to survive the very first day in the new place.
You just moved into the new place and the big question now is what you are supposed to do once you’ve reached your destination.
The thing to remember is that what you do on your first day in a new house will largely depend on the exact time of your arrival. If you cross the threshold of the new place sometime in the evening, then you’ll only have time to take a shower, make up the bed, and go to sleep. In that case, your first day in the new home will practically start on the next day.
On the other hand, should you arrive in the new place fairly early in the day, you should definitely use the time you have until late evening to tackle the most urgent post-relocation tasks such as:
Check the utilities. As soon as you enter the new place, your very first task is to check whether all home utilities are running properly. Electricity and running water are the two major utilities that you can’t do without, so they should be your immediate concern. If things look ok, then locate the electricity and water meters and write down their readings in case of a possible dispute later on.
Inspect the new home to find its secrets.
Inspect the home. Hopefully, you’ll have transferred the home utilities before the move, so another thing to do when you move into a new house is to inspect the new place for any troublesome signs. Just go from room to room and make sure everything seems normal – all windows and doors should be closed and secure, and no damage of any kind (especially water damage!) should be present anywhere.
Unpack your essentials boxes. Remember the Open-First boxes you prepared before the move? What you should do on your very first day in the new home is open those survival boxes and take out all the essential items such as toiletries, medications, tools, and anything else that you may need before you can start opening the rest of your moving boxes.
Prepare the bathroom. Regardless of the distance you’ve traveled to reach that new home of yours, chances are that you will be rather exhausted from the relocation trip itself. What to do after moving into a new home? Get the bathroom ready for a refreshing shower or a reinvigorating bath so that you can end Moving day on a positive note. Unpack the most essential bathroom items, hang the shower curtains and prepare the towels or bathrobes. After all, taking a quick shower and going to bed will probably be the two dominant thoughts in your head right after moving into a new house.
What you do on your first day after moving is critical as it’ll set the tone for the entire post-relocation period. Remember that you won’t be able to do everything on that first day, so take it slowly and don’t exert yourself on Day One. After all, surviving Moving day was your primary objective, and you’ve completed that successfully.
Moving into a new home means that you’ll be moving into an apartment or a house that you are not really familiar with. You won’t know their secrets yet, and while you’ll have plenty of time to learn those (dark) secrets as time goes by, one of the major issues right after the move is that that new place may not be as secure as you need it to be.
You and your family members need to feel safe and protected in that new place you just moved into, so one of the first things to do after moving into a new house is to make sure that residence can provide the required level of protection and safety.
Secure your house against unauthorized entry by changing the locks of all front doors. If necessary, consider installing a burglar alarm system and adding surveillance cameras and exterior lights to secure the outside parameter as well.
Check whether all windows can be closed tight and locked securely. Consider installing window locks or covers, if necessary.
Make the new home safer by installing fire alarms and smoke detectors throughout the place. Also, make sure there’s a functional fire extinguisher on each floor.
You need to feel safe and protected in your new home.
Remember to baby-proof / child-proof the entire home if you’ve moved with young children. This post-move task is extremely important since you must ensure the safety of your young ones. The rooms that prove to be dangerous for babies and toddlers are the nursery, bathroom, and kitchen.
Also, if you just moved into a 2- or 3-storied house, then one of your high-priority tasks is to secure the stairs as statistics show that roughly 100,000 children are taken to the ER each year due to staircase accidents.
Don’t ignore your stressed-out pets as well. The new home can be a dangerous place for cats and dogs unless you take the necessary precautionary measures. Start from the kitchen (food, alcoholic drinks, chemicals, garbage cans), then go through the bathroom (medications, chemicals, toilet bowl) and living room (electric cords, plants, batteries, fireplace) in search of potential dangers that could harm your pet friends. And when you find such hazards for your pets, eliminate them right away.
Purchase adequate homeowner’s or renter’s insurance to stay on the safe side.
Of course, one of the first things to do after moving into a new house or apartment is to start unpacking the delivered boxes. Similar to the process of packing for a move, unpacking can also take a long time to complete, especially when you don’t have enough helpers to give you a hand.
Nevertheless, the good news when you’re about to start unpacking after a move is that you’ll no longer have a deadline to keep you stressed out like you did when you were packing up your stuff. Basically, that means that you should unpack your essentials with a sense of urgency and then control the pace of the unpacking process according to your specific needs.
For instance, you may choose to postpone the task of unboxing and arranging your books onto a bookcase simply because it’ll be quite some time before you actually have enough time for reading.
As a rule of thumb, unpacking after moving is easier than packing for a move simply because you won’t need to worry about protecting your valuable items with the right packing materials. You already took care of that before the move, remember?
Once you’ve started unpacking, one issue that you’ll face right away is what to do with the empty cardboard boxes and unwrapped packing supplies as those materials will soon clutter up the living space.
Similar to packing, unpacking after a move will take a long time to finish.
It’s important to remember that in order to unpack efficiently after moving into a new home, you’re supposed to follow a pre-determined unpacking order for the best results. That unpacking order – also known as a room-by-room unpacking checklist – will guide you throughout the entire unpacking process, thus saving you plenty of time and energy.
So, which rooms to unpack first when you move into a new home? The unpacking checklist recommends that you start the unpacking task from the BATHROOM, then tackle the KITCHEN and BEDROOM, and end with the LIVING ROOM, any SPARE ROOMS, and all STORAGE SPACES.
One of your major concerns when unpacking after moving house will be TIME – that is, what tactics you use to unpack quickly so that you save precious post-relocation time. The following unpacking tips should help you speed up the unboxing process:
Unpack one room at a time to keep things organized;
Do not postpone the unpacking job too much;
Set mini unpacking tasks to keep yourself motivated;
Keep getting rid of all packing materials to avoid unnecessary decluttering;
Get help with unpacking, either from your loyal friends or from moving labor experts.
Moving to a new city or town is never an easy thing to do as it often means having to leave the familiarity of your old place only to replace it with a strange new world that can be quite daunting and intimidating in the very beginning. Moving house is a time of radical changes and finding yourself in a completely unknown place is not going to make it any easier for you.
Ultimately, the only way to feel comfortable in the new city or town you just moved to is to turn what’s unfamiliar into familiar – in other words, find the courage to explore it.
There are several ways to get to know your city a bit better with the purpose of accelerating the adaptation period after a house move.
Get to know your new city or town to feel more comfortable in it.
Use a city map. Nothing compares to exploring a new city with the help of a paper city map. So, buy one from the local bookstore and get ready for some exciting discoveries. The great thing about using an old-fashioned city map is that by staring at it as you’re walking around town, you should be able to visualize and memorize the layout of the entire city. And don’t worry too much about getting mistaken for a tourist – it won’t be long before you won’t need any maps anymore.
Use the Net. Use the Internet to delve deeper into your new town or city and uncover its secrets. Google Maps is a modern alternative to paper maps while many websites will give you tons of information on just about anything that you’re interested in. Social media groups and blogs can also provide you with enough information to start getting to know your place little by little.
Feel welcome to use sites specialized such as Yelp and Citysearch to find the best places in town where you can eat, drink, hang out, play sports, and even pick up new hobbies or get to practice old ones.
After moving to a new city, the key to jump-starting your adaptation period is to get familiarized with that place in order to feel comfortable living in it. Here are some of the most important places to locate in a new city or town:
Shopping centers, supermarkets, and grocery stores;
Your children’s school, if applicable;
Post offices, banks, the DMV office, the Police station;
The green areas in or around the city – parks and recreational areas;
Restaurants, diners, coffee shops;
Bars and night clubs;
Movie theaters, drama theaters, opera houses, concert halls;
Regardless of whether you have driven your own car across multiple states to its final destination or you’ve had your vehicle shipped by an experienced cross-county auto shipper, moving to another state means that you are required by law to register your automobile in the new state within a pre-determined period of time.
Of all the things to do after moving to a new state, the job of registering your car at the local DMV office seems to be the only one that has a specific deadline for its completion. The tricky part about the car registration process after a house move is that different states give recent home movers different gratis periods in which they must register their vehicles with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Don’t wait too long to register your car in the new state.
For example, the state of New York requires car owners to register their vehicle within 30 days from the arrival date while Florida only allows 10 days for the vehicle registration procedure.
Luckily, it’s not difficult to register a car in a new state as long as you have the right documentation. Here are the simple steps you need to take to complete the car registration task without any problems at all:
Contact your local DMV office for more information. Find the answers to the two most pressing questions: How much time you have to register your vehicle after the move and What documents you should bring with you when you visit the DMV office in person.
Keep in mind that you will be asked for an auto insurance policy purchased from the destination state – the state you just moved to. In the majority of cases, you will also be asked to present a car title in your name, a safety inspection certificate, and an emissions check certificate.
After the move, there will be plenty of activities around the new home – sometimes too many to count. And yet, one important thing to do after moving is to rate the services of your moving company. But why, you may ask.
There are several good reasons why you should take the time to leave a review about your mover. You may not realize it but doing so is way more important than you might think.
Helping other people
While you were researching moving companies with the purpose of picking the right one for your move, you must have checked customer reviews as part of your in-depth research. But what if nobody had cared to rate the services of their respective moving companies?
Writing a review about the moving company whose services you just used will surely help other people in the future – people on the move who are wondering where to find a reputable professional moving company for their house moving needs.
Regardless of whether you’re happy or unhappy with the movers you hired, it’s your responsibility to spread the word so that your customer review serves as a recommendation to others (through a positive review and a high overall rating) or as a warning sign (through a negative review and a low overall rating).
Solving a dispute with a mover
If you happen to be very dissatisfied with your moving company due to an unresolved issue with them, then leaving an honest account of what exactly happened and explaining why the mover did you wrong may cause the mover in question to rethink their decision and attempt to make things right with you.
Remember to rate the services of your moving company.
The thing is that top-rated moving companies don’t enjoy receiving negative feedback and negative reviews about their work – if they did, they would not be top-rated movers, would they? And that basically means that a well-written moving review that provides a sincere account of the issue or issues has a dispute-solving power that you should use to your advantage, whenever applicable.
No matter how you look at it, rating your moving company after the move can only be beneficial for you. As a bonus, leaving a moving review can take about 10 minutes of your time – let’s say no longer than a brief break from unpacking.
When writing a customer review, you should provide as many details as you can to back-up your overall rating expressed in stars from 1 to 5. Get straight to the point when explaining why you’re happy or unhappy with the moving services you hired. Also, strive to achieve a maximum level of objectivity in your narrative (not easy to do) and mind your spelling and grammar to add credibility to your moving story.
If you just moved to a new state with a school-age child, then one of the things to do after moving to a new city is to find a good school for your kid. That is a very important post-relocation task that you are supposed to handle before moving out, but you can also take care of it after the move is over in case you didn’t have enough time prior to Moving day.
As a rule, moving house is quite a challenging task but moving with children can be even tougher due to the additional pressure of making sure they are safe and the extra efforts of finding a school where they can continue their education.
All in all, there are several steps to choosing the perfect school for your child after moving into a new home in a new city, most often in another state altogether.
Identify their needs. Stop for a moment and try to figure out the educational needs of your child. You’ll probably have a choice between several schools so make a sound decision based on your kid’s abilities and interests. Will they be more comfortable in a smaller school or a larger one? Also, how important are the school’s extracurricular activities – sports, music, drama?
Look for recommendations. In the majority of cases, there will be more than one school to choose from, so you’re going to have to pick the right one. And one good way to do just that is to look for recommendations you can trust – from friends (use your favorite social medium to reach your pals) or directly from parents who live in the destination town or city (online forums can help you in your choice).
Some schools are better than others.
Browse online resources. Make sure you research online the schools you’ve shortlisted. The National Center for Education Statistics has a search tool that lets you find all schools and colleges in the country, and then check statistical data about each educational institution. Also, you can visit GreatSchools.org – a non-profit website that lists useful data – school ratings, school programs, parents’ reviews) about the public or private schools in most U.S. towns or cities.
Do the school tour. Without a doubt, the best way to find a good school for your child after moving house is to visit the schools in person, together with your child, and to try to gauge the atmosphere inside the school itself and get those crucial first impressions. If possible, arrange a meeting with the school principal or administrators in order to ask them the questions you have prepared in advance. Meeting a few of the teachers can also help you determine which school will be the best fit for your son or daughter.
Prepare the documents. You’ll need the following documents before you can register your child at a new school after moving: copies of report cards and transcripts, copies of completed exams and scores, copies of recommendations from previous teachers, and your child’s immunization records.
One of the most important things to do after moving to a new state is to find a new primary care physician in the town or city you just moved to. This is not an easy task by any means and will require extra time and effort from you. Still, it’s something you just have to do not only for your peace of mind but because you never know when a medical issue will come around the corner.
The thing is that your previous doctor knew you and your medical history well, and now you’re going to have to start a brand-new patient-doctor relationship from scratch – something that will require quite a lot of mental energy as well.
So, how to find a new doctor after moving to a new city in a new state? Follow the steps below to choose an experienced and knowledgeable family physician for you and your family. Don’t postpone tackling this task as health is still the most valuable thing in life.
Get in touch with your previous doctor and ask them whether he or she can recommend a family physician in the new area. This is the best way to approach the task of finding a new doctor after a move because your current medical practitioner knows best your health needs.
Spread the word among your friends that you’re looking for a good doctor in the new town or city. The fastest way to do it is to publish a post in your preferred social media platform and hope that one of your pals gives you a meaningful response, or at least shares the post with their friends.
Secure a family physician shortly after the house move.
Look for online forums where former patients may have shared their opinions about their own physicians – whether or not they are happy with the professionalism, expertise, care, and attention they receive. Such reviews should give you a better idea about who the most trusted doctors are in the new place.
Use the power of the Internet to help you find the right doctor for you after the move. Luckily, there are a number of specialized websites that can give you more information about the health care providers in the country by city. Hopefully, your destination will be included in that list as well, thus aiding you tremendously in your search.
A couple of websites worth mentioning are the American Medical Association and Healthgrades.
Find a suitable doctor with the help of your health insurance provider. Oftentimes, securing a new primary care physician means that that new doctor will need to fall within your health insurance network. It’s a good idea to check with your health insurance company and request a list of local doctors.
Set appointments with the doctors you’ve shortlisted and meet the medical specialists in person. Brief conversations with future family physicians will reveal a lot about their levels of professionalism and competency. So, do consider meeting a few recommended doctors in person before making up your mind.
After moving to a new city, most likely in a new state altogether, you’ll soon learn that some post-relocation tasks, while still viewed as essential, are less urgent than others. One thing that you don’t need to take care of right away is finding new friends in the new town or city you’ve recently moved to.
Forming new friendships is a process that takes time and should not be forced in any way but let it evolve naturally so that you know you’ve made genuine friends who will be there for you for years, possibly even for a lifetime. Nevertheless, you should still make an effort to make new friends after the move using a number of fool-proof ways.
Here are some of the best ways to make friends in a new city after a house move:
Get in touch with your social media friends. A simple post such as, “Does anyone have any friends in [name of city or town]?” could get you connected with some of your friends’ friends, who in turn may be willing to provide you with a bit of newcomer’ assistance. And maybe offer you a new friendship as well.
Use a mobile app. There are many mobile apps that will, supposedly, help you meet new people with similar interests. One of the most popular ones is called Meetup and it’s available in thousands of U.S. cities and towns. There’s no harm in trying out a few apps for making friends to see if that’ll work out for you.
Bond with your co-workers. A great way to make new friends after moving to a new city is to try to be more sociable and accessible at your workplace. Think about it – you’ll be spending so many hours with people who are likely to have similar interests to yours, so you may as well befriend some of them too.
There’s a good chance that you find good friends among your new neighbors.
Be a nice neighbor. One simple thing that can definitely help you find new friends after moving to a new place is to be a good neighbor. Be nice and polite to the folks next door and be ready to help them out should the need to do so arise. The thing is, you just don’t know when you may need their help too.
There are many ways to meet new people after moving to a new city and befriend some of them. Follow the link below to access the complete list of 20 great ways to make new friends after a move.
Forging new friendships after moving is important because it should keep you away from the treacherous condition known as RELOCATION DEPRESSION. Nevertheless, it’s also vital that you make an effort to keep in touch with old friends – the good friends you had to leave behind. The possibilities are practically endless here: you can use old-fashioned methods of keeping in touch with your pals (talking on the phone, exchanging letters or postcards) or modern ways of communication (e-mailing, chatting, social networking).
Ideally, you will plan and schedule personal visits to each other whenever that’s possible.
There’ll so many things to do after moving into a new home, and some tasks will take plenty of time to complete, especially the unpacking process that may go on for weeks on end.
However, you’ve recently survived a stressful house move and since there’s no deadline to stress you out anymore, you may as well schedule a fun event in your post-move calendar – a fun housewarming party!
In fact, throwing a housewarming party shortly after your move is an excellent way to celebrate the successful relocation, as well as to invite over a few friends (if any), some co-workers, and of course, your new neighbors in order to get to know them a bit better.
Of course, you don’t really have to organize a housewarming party after moving into a new home. But if you choose to do it, here are some of the benefits that come with it:
the casual get-together will get your mind off the overwhelming number of essential chores after moving into a new home;
you’ll be able to show your new place to friends, colleagues, and neighbors, thus using the unique opportunity to meet new people and hopefully befriend some of them too;
you’ll get a much-needed mental break from unpacking and arranging your stuff around the house, which in turn should help you deal with those two time-consuming tasks more quickly after the party;
the housewarming party will mark the beginning of a new chapter in your life and will, supposedly, bring good luck to the new place and the people who live under its roof (you and your family members, including your pets).
Organizing an informal get-together after the move is a good way to take a break from all post-move tasks.
If you’re wondering about the best time to throw a housewarming party, remember that they are no set rules about it. However, you want to avoid organizing that social get-together type of event too early after the move because the place will be too chaotic for guests and you may not be mentally ready for it.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t wait too long either – after all, nobody will expect to find the place perfectly tidied up and organized so soon after a major house move.
You should give yourself a bit of extra time to settle in the new house or apartment before you decide to have guests in it. As a rule of thumb, 4-5 weeks after the move is the optimal timeframe to wait until you decide to organize a post-move party but the right time is when you feel is the right time. In any case, you’re expected to provide your potential guests with enough advance notice so that they can include you in their plans.
When you move into a new place, there’s a high probability that you won’t feel that that new place is really your home, at least not at first. The entire house or apartment will most likely feel strange and unfamiliar and possibly even unwelcoming… and that is normal because you’ve lived in another home until that very moment. In short, you won’t belong to that new place you just moved into, not yet.
In the majority of cases, giving yourself more TIME is the only way to settle in that new residence. Little by little, you should begin to feel more and more comfortable as days and weeks and months start to go by. There are no guarantees, of course, that you’ll be able to ever feel right in that new place no matter how much time passes. However, now that the house move is complete, you just have to give it a go and see what happens.
Luckily, there are a number of good ways to speed up the process of making the new place feel like home… simply because the sooner you start to feel comfortable and safe and happy in that new house or apartment, the higher the chances are that you’ll breeze through the acclimatization period and focus on your life after moving to a new city.
So, what to do after moving into a new house or apartment? That’s an easy one: make the new place your own by making it feel like your home. Here’s some advice on how you can do just that:
Create a floor plan. One of the best things about moving into a new place is the unique opportunity to arrange and decorate the living space exactly the way you want. And to do it, it may help you to make a floor plan so that you know exactly where to place each big furniture piece and large house appliances. Space management is key here because you may be forced to work with limited living space, especially if you had to downsize your home.
Turn the new place into the home you’ve always wanted to have.
Arrange and decorate it your way. You may wish to recreate the same or similar interior design to the one you had in your previous residence. That’s a good tactic when you’re not a big fan of change and therefore want to keep things as unchanged as possible: arrange the furniture the same way as before, display the same decorations, and so on.
On the other hand, you may feel the need to do things completely differently from what they were before the move. In that case, you’ll be willing to experiment with vastly different home décor techniques with the purpose of creating a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere inside that still strange place.
Finish unpacking. The thing is that you won’t really feel comfortable and relaxed in the new place if it’s still cluttered with unpacked cardboard boxes here and there. To make the new place feel like home, you’re going to have to finish the unpacking task first so that you can focus on what’s next.
As soon as you walk over the threshold of the new home, you can expect the official beginning of the post-move adaptation period. There are many factors that will determine how tough that adaptation will be and how long it will last. It’s a fact that some people seem to kind of breeze through it and get back on track without any major problems at all. On the other hand, other home movers seem much more reluctant to accept the new changes and have serious troubles letting go of the life they used to have before the house move.
It’s normal to feel unsettled and disorientated after a house move, especially when moving to a very different part of the country from climatic, geographic, or demographic points of view. But it’s mostly the nostalgic sadness of having had to leave all that’s familiar and comforting behind, most notably good friends and family members, that is likely to create from moderate to serious problems shortly after the house move is over and done with.
Here are some tips that should help you adapt to a new environment more quickly and more easily:
Adapt to the new home
The post-relocation adaptation period starts from the place you just moved into.
Set up the home to your own taste to feel comfortable in it. Arrange the furniture the way you want, add decorations to make the living space aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and add the finishing touches such as hanging photos and paintings on the walls.
Give yourself more time to adapt properly to the new surroundings.
Inspect and explore your new place in depth to learn its secrets. Also, make sure the house or apartment is 100% secure, including for your children and pets, in order to feel safe in it.
Finish the unpacking task to get rid of all unpacked moving boxes and the excess of packing materials that keep the living space rather cluttered.
Clean up the new place thoroughly so that you feel nice and comfy inside it.
Feeling safe and comfortable in your new home is critical for a successful adaptation to the new environment after a house move. However, that’s rarely enough as you can’t possibly spend all your time inside – sooner or later, you’ll have to go out of your temporary hideout.
Explore the new town or city to familiarize yourself with what it has to offer. Get to know the unfamiliar surroundings and soon that sense of strangeness and uneasiness should start to disappear. The more you discover and rediscover the new area, the more comfortable you should feel living in it.
Consider using your job as a shield against the negative effects of moving into a new town or city. By focusing your mental and physical energy on your job, you’ll have less time to fill our mind with nostalgic thoughts of a period that you could probably never get back.
Meet new people in order to adapt to a new environment almost effortlessly. Make an effort to open up to the idea of meeting your people, spending time with them, and hopefully finding new friends among them. But how are you supposed to meet new people who have similar interests to yours? One excellent way to do just that is to pursue your hobbies, sign up for different classes after work (fitness, yoga, dance, music, art, drama) or join sports clubs.
Joshua Green is a relocation expert and a moving industry professional, one of the esteemed contributors to MyMovingReviews.com with specialized articles and informative guides which help people organize and execute their moves easily and comfortably.
Joshua is a recognized author of two books about moving one of which is Relocating Without Breaking A Sweat - Your Personal Handbook For A Perfect Move. Both books are well received and help thousands of people make the right relocation decisions.
He is known to skillfully incorporate his never-ending energy, utmost dedication and raw passion into his works.
You can contact Joshua Green at: joshua@mymovingreviews.com | Linkedin
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