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How to Start Unpacking and Organizing Your Home After a Move

So you’ve just moved to a new home – congrats! Half the battle is over, and it’s on to round two. Once the movers have unloaded your things and the boxes have been opened, it’s time to figure out how exactly to unpack and organize all of that stuff! We know this can be a bit of an overwhelming process. Just remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sorting through all of your belongings takes days, weeks and often months to accomplish. As for organizing it all – well, that’s a tedious process, in and of itself.

To help you prioritize and organize after the move, we’ve included a few tips for getting started during the first week in your new home. Good luck!

Unpack nursery and childrens’ bedrooms first

First things first: when moving into your house, you’ll have to decide which rooms to start unpacking immediately. If you have small children or a baby, I strongly recommend unpacking the nursery or kids’ bedrooms first. Moving can be especially confusing for small children, which is why it’s so important to maintain a sense of normalcy on moving day. By setting up their bedrooms ahead of time, you’ll be able to create a safe space that gives them a sense of comfort. If you have a newborn, I recommend setting up the nursery’s essential furnishings first – such as the changing table, diaper pail and rocking chair – to save your sanity during the first few weeks.

On moving day, the movers should reassemble all beds and cribs for you. Once these have been set up:

Make the beds with clean sheets and pillows.
Find a designated drawer or basket for diapers, baby toys and baby supplies.
If you can’t find baskets, use the now-unpacked moving boxes to organize your kids toys until you’ve found them.
Put away all of the children’s clothes in separate drawers.
Utilize closet hangers
Remember: all the fun wall decor and fluff can wait until you’ve settled in a bit longer.

Kids rooms and nurseries are usually the easiest rooms to unpack. Besides beds, dressers and miscellaneous toys, there won’t be that much else to organize immediately.

Control cords and organize electrics

If you don’t jump on this task quickly, your home could soon become one big tangled mess. A few solutions for all of your unused, various cords:

To store cords, I first recommend designating a drawer or basket to hold any that you aren’t currently using. Before placing them in a drawer, you should wrap them securely so that they don’t become tangled up in one another.
If you have a lot of different cords all plugged into the same area, I suggest purchasing a Cord Control Kit from getorg.com . The kit comes with a long plastic tube, called a Superflex, which can hold several different cords in one place at one time. The kit also includes essential color coded labels for each cord.
To save money, Lifehacker suggests grabbing your leftover paper towel tubes and inserting cords inside. You can also use metal twist ties to hold several cords together.

Create a linen closet

Seriously – if I could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice about unpacking, it would be to designate a closet (or some other area) on day one for all of my bath towels, beach towels and bedroom sheets. You’d be surprised how lost these get in the shuffle of packing everything else. Besides basic clothes, toiletries and essentials – sheets and towels are the most important (and often overlooked) necessities during your first week in a new home. You’ll need them in order to shower and sleep – so don’t let the task of organizing these items fall to the bottom of your priority list. A few tips:

Consider washing all towels and sheets for a fresh start in the new home. Many times people forget to do this before the move or the items simply get musty from sitting in a box.
Fold bath towels and place in a closet. If no extra closet is available, I suggest ordering extra shelving or a free-standing bathroom storage closet.
Avoid letting beach towels get mixed in with bath towels. Since these are typically used less often, I suggest placing the beach towels on the highest shelf in the closet.
If space is an issue, roll towels to save room.
Place toilet paper and other bath products in a basket inside the closet.
Good Housekeeping recommends folding and storing sheets inside of pillowcases. This will help keep your different sets of sheets for different beds separated and organized.

Kitchen

Without a doubt the kitchen should be one of the first rooms you unpack when moving to a new house. Unless you have a nursery or child’s bedroom to organize, this room should be your top priority. A few recommendations for unpacking and organizing your kitchen space:

Make sure you unpack the most essential kitchen items first, such as flatware, dish towels and oven mitts.
Use common sense when organizing your kitchenwares. For instance, essential items (like those listed above) should be placed in easily accessible drawers. Cookware that you use often, such as pots and pans, should be placed in cabinets beside the oven. When unpacking dinnerware, make sure to place the items you’ll use more often, such as coffee mugs, plates or cereal bowls, on lower shelves so that you can reach them more easily.
To save space, place flat pans (such as baking sheets) in the drawer underneath the stove, if you have one.
All dishwashing soap, sponges and all-purpose cleaning spray can be placed under the sink. If you have cleaning supplies that are potentially poisonous to pets or children, I suggest placing these on a higher shelf in your pantry instead of below the sink.

Focus on the entryway

The entryway is the first and last thing people see when they visit your home. And, more importantly, it’s the area of your house where you spend a lot of time – mostly, without even realizing it. If you don’t work to organize this space during the first week, your entryway could turn into a chaotic pile of shoes, hats and jackets. A few tips:

Hooks, hooks and more hooks. These nifty tools are a total god-send when it comes to your entryway. They’re great for keeping keys, hats, dog leashes and jackets all organized and off the floor. I recommend installing coat hooks as soon as possible.
Place a small basket for your mail by the door. To avoid dropping all your mail on the floor or misplacing it around the house, I suggest finding a basket or small box for your envelopes.
Keep those shoes off your entryway floor by placing either a medium size basket or low-rise cubby by the door. These options provide a super easy way for household members to drop their shoes in one place, instead of all around the house. During the winter months add a boot tray or drying mat in the entryway as well. Not only will this help your boots dry before you put them on again, it will also help you to avoid trudging snow and slush into your new home.
Add an umbrella stand in the corner, and you’re good to go!