While packing and hiring movers will play a significant part in the success of your relocation exercise, unpacking is the climax or anticlimax of every home moving process. After fully unpacking, you will know whether your previous actions were correct or wrong. Even more, unpacking determines how fast you can adjust to your new home or city life.
Sometimes, unpacking comes with insurmountable urgency. You want to have a functional home where you can get your essentials when you need them. There is also the disorganization and inconvenience of staying in a home with piles of boxes. Besides the urgency, unpacking requires proper planning since a wrong move means more work!
These five tips should help you make your unpacking mission easier and more rewarding when you move;
1. Organize Your Packing
While this may be unknown to you, how you pack before moving to your new home determines your success with unpacking. Notably, your packing makes up the initial planning stage of your unpacking in your new home. And it is a step that is too vital to ignore.
Organizing your packing will help you have a system for unpacking. You do not need to break into boxes without an idea of what they contain. Some of the ways through which you can organize your packing for fast and easy unpacking include the following;
- Take photos of all your belonging before you begin packing
- Avoid mixing items from various rooms in one box. Instead, pack everything from each room in one or two boxes.
- Use the same color codes for boxes from each room for easy identification
- Label each box appropriately
- Number each item to ensure that you know where each item goes during packing
- Use special marks for boxes containing fragile goods
- Have your essentials accessible
- Have an unpacking inventory
2. Clean Before You Begin Unpacking
The biggest mistake that many people make is to unpack and clean simultaneously. And in many cases, doing these two vital tasks simultaneously will always lead to a disaster. Give your new home a thorough cleaning a week or a few days before moving. It is easier and more convenient to deep clean empty spaces.
Again, there are a few things to clean before unpacking—dust off your kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, sinks, dishwasher, stoves, and shelves. Also, clean your washing machine, bathtub, and bathtub jets.
This operation should be quick, and it is doable after you move. However, do this before unpacking since you will not have time to clean in the coming days.
3. Avoid TV, Games, or Other Distractions
Setting up your TV and games should be the last item on your unpacking list. They are a recipe for laziness and distractions. You can only have them up if you plan to keep kids occupied since kids will often get in the way. But for you and your team, an interesting music playlist should be enough.
4. Place Boxes Into The Respective Rooms
The temptation to unpack each box as soon as it is out of the truck is sometimes irresistible. Again, you and your helpers could find it easier to pile up boxes in a single room. Either way, you will have a bigger mess and more work.
Identify your boxes by colors or labels to move them into their respective rooms. If you used color codes on your boxes after or during packing, mark each door with the corresponding color. Use your packing inventory and confirm if each room has the right number of boxes once you move all boxes to the rooms.
5. Handle the Essentials, Bedrooms, and Bathrooms First
Avoid unpacking more than one room at a time or hopping from room to room. Instead, handle each room at a go and ensure that you set up everything perfectly before moving to the next space. And before handling any room, set up the essentials such as a change of clothes, toiletries, charges, utensils, pajamas, and prescriptions. You will need them when you least expect to use them.
Now, handle your rooms, starting with the most important. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and kids’ rooms should be at the top of your list. Unpacking will take a toll on you. So, set up the bed, mattresses, bedsheets, blankets, and pillows as soon as everything is out of the van. Do the same for kids’ rooms. However, teens can handle most of their rooms single-handedly. You can do the same for bathroom supplies.
Prioritize the kitchen depending on your needs. It can always wait if you have some snacks for the day. Your next points of focus should include the living room and dining room. Laying out your furniture can be hectic, but a tape should help.
Conclusion
Instead of making unpacking a chore, make it fun. Work had to complete this as fast as possible. Store anything you will not need. Once done, it could be time to host a housewarming bash and get to know your neighbors.
