You’ve finally done it. After years of saving and sacrificing, you’ve managed to scrape together enough money to buy your very own home. It’s not a palace, but it’s yours, and that feels pretty good. But before you start inviting friends over for a housewarming party, you have one more thing to do. You need to do some preparation work to prepare your new place for moving day. Here are the things you should do before moving into your new home!
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Change Your Address With The Post Office
With utilities taken care of, the next step is changing your address so that anything you have coming into your old place will arrive at your new one. With online tools, it’s easy to print out postage and ship everything that needs to be shipped before you move. If you’re not using online tools, it’s also wise to contact your bank and creditors to let them know about the move.
Check Smoke Detectors
Before you even think about moving in, make sure that your smoke detectors are all in working order. You’ll want to make sure they either have batteries or have been tested with a battery recently, and if they’re more than ten years old, it might be time for a new one. If you need a new detector, be sure to get a UL-approved smoke detector.
Check Your Security
Whether you’re living in an apartment building with a fancy doorman or you live alone, you should check out your area and look into how safe it is. You don’t want to move into a place that has been the scene of several robberies, and you especially don’t want to live someplace that has had any unsolved murders. At the very least, look at crime statistics for your area on CrimeMapping.com and see what kind of crimes have been happening recently.
Locate Your Electric Panel
This is a step that many young adults forget to take, but living in a house means you have a circuit breaker box. It’s a good idea to look at where it is and see if there are any stickers from the electric company telling you what each of the breakers controls. Before you move in, go ahead and label which breaker is for the mainline so that you don’t have to play a game of circuit breaker roulette if something goes wrong.
Deep Clean The New Place
It may seem like a good idea to save time and money by not cleaning your new place before you move in, but it might also be a very bad idea. Putting off that big cleaning job will mean that there could be dirt or other dangerous contaminants all over the floors and surfaces at the new place. It’s best to clean the place top to bottom before you move in, not only because it’s a nice thing to do but also because you want to make sure there are no big surprises when the movers get there.
Meet Your New Neighbors
This doesn’t mean you have to go and invite everyone over for a party. Just wave and say “hello” when you see someone and make an effort to get to know the people who live in your building or on your street. If there is a doorman or security guard, be sure that they know who you are so that someone can contact you if they need to. If there is a manager, ask for their contact information. Who knows, you could become friends with come of your neighbors!
Conclusion
Ensuring that your new home is safe, clean, and secure will make it a much more enjoyable place to live. It’s also nice to get in touch with the neighbors to not feel like such an outsider when you move into a new place. Worst case scenario is that you spend some time settling in before you take care of some of these things, but you should always try to get yourself into an open and welcoming mindset. Hopefully, this list has helped you see that moving into a new place isn’t stressful if you take time out for these necessary tasks first.
