Just Moved? Here’s How To Settle In

When you’ve just moved house, there’s a lot to take in. You’re in an entirely new place, surrounded by people you’re not familiar with yet and looking to build a network of places and people like the one you had back at your old place. Moving house can be an incredibly exciting experience, but it can also be a very daunting one; without taking the proper steps to settle yourself in, it might take a long time before you feel like you’re completely at home in your new digs.

Luckily, there’s plenty you can do to settle in to a new home. Every little helps, as they say, and even the smallest steps you take can really help you to feel like you’re at home. Here are our tips for settling in if you’ve just moved.

Furnish the place

One of the easiest and most basic ways you can make a house feel like home is to furnish the place properly. Furniture should communicate something about your personality and character while remaining functional and useful; in short, the furniture you have in your home says a lot about you, so surrounding yourself with the things you love in this area will go a long way towards helping you settle in. For kitchens and bedrooms, it’s a good idea to pursue a great custom furniture designer, since a furniture arrangement that’s uniquely yours can only make an environment better. Elsewhere, try sourcing furniture from second-hand shops and friends, or websites like Freecycle. These are the places you tend to find the quirkiest and most idiosyncratic furniture, and that’s how you can make a home feel like yours.

Introduce yourself to neighbours

We know, we know – nobody likes to introduce themselves to their neighbours, especially if they’re British. It’s just not in the national character somehow to casually visit people you’re not already friends with. Having said that, introducing yourself to the people around you can really help you to build rapport and understand who’s around you. Once you start to learn the individual characteristics and quirks of your neighbours, you’ll build a more holistic picture of your new environment and that’ll help you to feel settled. If you’re a craftsperson or skilled chef, why not bake or create something that you can use as an introductory gift of sorts? Think about what you’d like a neighbour to do or say if they were introducing themselves to you.

Hang up familiar art

If you’ve brought some of your favourite art pieces or photographs with you from your old place, then you should hang them up in your new home as quickly as possible. Display these artworks prominently and make sure they’re somewhere you pass regularly, so that you’ll see them frequently. Having familiar sights around you can help to ease the transition between homes – if you’re seeing something you always used to see, you’ll have that pleasant association with home, and it won’t be long before the new place starts to feel like a permanent fixture. If you had a radio station you would regularly listen to in your old home, make sure to listen to that as much as possible, too. Basically, you need to surround yourself with familiar sights, sounds and smells as much as you can.

Don’t get takeout at first

It might be tempting, after a long day of unpacking and finishing up moving proceedings, to simply call a local takeout restaurant and have them deliver pizza, Indian food or whatever your preference might be. This could be a mistake, though. Cooking is quite an intimate process, and if you’re moving in to your new home with a family or a partner, then familiarising yourself with kitchen procedures is another bonus to cooking a meal. The most important thing to do when moving into a new home is to make new memories and not dwell on the old ones, and although takeout is convenient and often delicious, it’s not going to create memories like cooking a really great meal will.

Get to know the area

It’s a good idea to go on long walks if you’re able to, especially near the beginning of your time at your home. Use Google Maps (or a physical map if you’re a technophobe!) to familiarise yourself with your new surroundings. Try to devise a cyclical route that will take you around some of the important spots in your new neighbourhood and then take you home at the end – this will help you to get the lay of the land and develop a sense of local geography. If there are any local parks or recreational spots, it’s a good idea to try and visit those too, especially if you have kids; it’s good to know where you’ll be regularly going, and getting a head start on that is a great idea.