Moving Hacks That Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE! ⧸⧸ How To UNPACK Your House
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Summary
Jacob and I are moving again and I wanted to share my best tips for moving and unpacking in our new place. I have a ton of experience with moving and packing and I think these tips will help you feel like you are settling in to your new home.
Transcript
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Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where I'm going to be sharing my best moving tips.
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If you are new to my channel, here we talk about classic living and traditional values
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and I would love it if you would consider subscribing to my channel and hitting that
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notification bell as well as heading over to my Substack newsletter where you will get access to
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a ton of exclusive content including our community, our discussion threads, our book club, and a ton
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of other content. So if you haven't seen our life update video, I will link that up above here but
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Jacob and I are moving again and if you didn't already know, we have moved pretty much every
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year since we've gotten married and now we're making a really big move to Florida and we are
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so excited. But because of that, I have a lot of experience with moving, with packing, and with
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unpacking. So today I want to share my tips for unpacking, for moving, and getting set up in your
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new place. I think this will be really helpful to you if you are moving and you want to get settled
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in and you want to feel like you are home. So let's get in to today's video. Okay, number one,
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clean in visual lines. This was something I learned in maybe our third move and it made a huge
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difference. So basically what this means is that I would unpack everything from a box and instead of
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just willy-nilly putting things away, I would say, okay, I'm going to start from this side of the room
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and anything that doesn't go in this side of the room will just keep getting pushed back behind me
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so that I can look at what's in front of me and see that it's clean, see that the room is coming
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together. Everything that's behind me doesn't belong in this space and will be put away but
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will be put away in whatever other space there is in the room. So essentially what you're doing is
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you're moving in kind of columns throughout the room so that you can see the room linearly and you
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can see your progress. I think a big mistake when we're unpacking generally is that we will dump
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everything out and then just kind of start willy-nilly putting things away and the room
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doesn't look completely clean until you're done with everything, which can take a couple days.
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But if you're working in these lines, if you're working through the room kind of step by step and
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putting everything that doesn't go in this area behind you, then you can say, okay, I've cleaned half
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of the room. Instead of feeling like, oh, I've unpacked some stuff, it's like, no, I've literally
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unpacked half of the room and the other half I still need to do. And it just allows you to
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compartmentalize a little bit more as you unpack and set up the space. Number two is always get the
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kitchen unpacked first. This is probably the hardest thing to do because unpacking a kitchen
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is so difficult. You just don't know where everything is going to go. You don't know what
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things you need every day and what things you need only a couple times a year. And trying to find
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those spaces can be difficult. Plus there's the jigsaw puzzle of, oh, I went from a smaller
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house to a bigger house or a bigger house to a smaller house. How does everything get put
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away? And what's actually going to make sense for me in this kitchen, in this new space?
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It's not easy, but it is really important because the kitchen is the heart of the home. And if you
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don't have a working kitchen, you can't cook meals. You can't send your kids to school with
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their lunches. You can't make breakfast for yourselves. And it just really limits how much
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you can get done in a day as far as food. And then you have to depend on eating a lot of takeout,
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which is not ideal. So what we really want to do is get the kitchen unpacked first so that
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you can start feeling like you're in your own house and you can really start cooking meals. And
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eating in your own home, eating a home-cooked meal in your new house, it just really makes the whole
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thing feel settled. And I didn't used to do this. I used to wait a couple of days to get the kitchen
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unpacked. And then I was eating out every single meal and it was a waste of money and a waste of
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time. So focusing on the kitchen, getting that done early is a huge bonus. Number three is get one
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room totally unpacked. So I know I said get the kitchen unpacked first and you definitely should
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do that. But there are some rooms in the house that are really easy to get unpacked, right? Like a
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living room. A living room typically doesn't have a ton of stuff in it besides furniture. So if you
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can get that one room just set up and feeling clean and ready, it makes a huge difference that you can
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have one room in the house that you can just always go to while everything else is a mess and just relax
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and take a deep breath. I think living in a house that is entirely messy all the time, it's really
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overwhelming. So having a few spaces in the house that you can go to and just kind of chill out and
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feel like you are making progress is very important. So living room, it could be a bedroom, it could be
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a den, something that doesn't take that long to set up, but that really will allow you to kind of
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decompress as you're getting the rest of the house set up. Number three is as you're unpacking, if you see
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something that you forgot that you owned, get rid of it. This is a really good policy because often
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we have things in storage we don't even remember that we owned and when we get to the new house,
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we open up a box and we're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know I had this. There's a reason you
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didn't know you had it, throw it away. Now that's not to say if it's something sentimental you should do
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that or if it's something that you do use once a year but it's only once a year you should do that.
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This is to say if you have stuff that you've just kind of collected over time and don't ever use,
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just you don't need it. Declutter it, give it away, someone else will enjoy it and it doesn't
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need to take up room in your house. You'll never feel like a hoarder more than when you're moving
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because you keep thinking to yourself like, how do I have this much stuff? And when you're set up in a
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house, it's very clear why you have all that stuff but when you're unpacking, you're like, where does
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this go and why do I have so many things? And it's nice when you do come across something that
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you don't use very often or ever that you didn't remember that you even had to go, you know what,
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I don't need to find space for this. This is going out of my house. Next, ask your friends to help.
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Your friends want to help. Your family wants to help and they will be very happy to do it for a beer
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and some pizza. We were so lucky this last move to have some wonderful friends come and help us,
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a number of friends come and help us and all we had to do was pay them in a delicious meal after
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they helped and they were so generous with their time. People really are so much more kind than you
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expect so ask your friends to help you and you will see how many friends really are willing to come
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and do that. If you're near family, ask your family to come and help. They want to help too.
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Don't feel like you have to do this big move totally by yourself. People can help you unpack.
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People can help you move things and they want to do so. Now I find it's a little funny to have
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someone help you unpack certain things in the house because you'll be like a little self-conscious.
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So I wouldn't necessarily ask someone to help me unpack my clothes but I might have them help me
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unpack my baby's clothes or help me unpack kitchen stuff. Stuff that it wouldn't have any risk of me
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feeling like self-conscious and again they're happy to be there and to help you out. Last but not least
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figure out how you want to unpack the house and what matches your personality. I think some people
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want to get it all done super quickly and some people are more comfortable taking it easy and
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doing it a little bit more piecemeal and step by step and that is totally fine. Just go with your
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personality and don't fight it. I'm somebody who likes to get everything done really quickly.
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This time I was super pregnant and I was just too tired to actually do it. So when my mom came we
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got it done in two days but before that we lived in this house for about two weeks where there was
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a lot of stuff that I couldn't get unpacked completely and even though that didn't go with
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my personality it was also the reality of the situation. So normally when I'm not pregnant when
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I'm a very kind of awake and bright-eyed person I want to get my house unpacked quickly and my mom
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is amazing at that. But if you're somebody who likes to do just like a couple boxes a day
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that's totally fine. Just go with your personality and unpack the way that makes sense to you.
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So those are my moving tips. I would love to know your thoughts in the comments and if you have any
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other good moving tips make sure to share them with us in the comments below. If you're not already
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following my channel make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell and don't forget to head
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over to classicallyabby.substack.com. If you're not already following me on social media it's
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at classicallyabby absolutely everywhere. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys in my next