How to Organize Your New Home as You Unpack

Moving into a new home is exciting, but can be stressful. It’s a great opportunity to tackle a clutter problem and get more organized. It might be tempting to unpack as fast as you can and shove things wherever you can, but taking some extra time will save you stress in the long term. Here are some ideas to help you organize as you unpack.

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Plan Ahead

One of the biggest mistakes people make with cross country moving is to try and get all the unpacking done in one day or over a weekend. If you can, plan ahead and give yourself a few days to unpack and organize.

If you have young children, plan some activities to keep them busy or send them off to stay with their grandparents. You can get on with organizing your house with fewer distractions and not worry about what the children are doing.

Unpack Room By Room

If you’re unpacking as you go, it’s easy to get distracted by a box in the kitchen while you’re trying to get your bedroom unpacked. Concentrate on one room at a time, especially if you have a room that will need a lot of organizing, like a craft room.

Start with the kitchen. Once that’s unpacked, you can cook at home and save money on ordering in. To make things easier, label all your moving boxes with which room they should go in and what’s in them, so your movers can put things in the right room for you and you can find the things you want as you’re unpacking.

Once you’ve finished unpacking the kitchen, you could move onto the bedrooms, bathrooms, or the living room next, depending on what you want to use first. Save the rooms you use the least, like the office or the spare bedroom, until last. Your most used rooms should be unpacked first.

Declutter As You Unpack

While you’re unpacking, make a pile of things to throw out or donate. If you packed quickly without time to declutter, you should definitely do this.

If you spot something that doesn’t get used anymore, throw it out. If you didn’t use it in your old house, you probably won’t use it in your new one either. Donate it or get rid of it to give yourself more space for the things that you do use.

Organize Your New Home With Household Objects You Already Have

The internet is crammed full of hacks and ideas for organizing your home, and these hacks often have something in common. Many of them use common household objects to get things organized. For example, there are tips that suggest using spice carousels to organize loose items, plastic racks for hair accessories, or jars for baking items like cupcake cases.

Before you rush out to buy dozens of storage bins and whatever acrylic storage systems you saw on Instagram, see what you already have that could be repurposed. You can save some money and not add to the clutter!

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