New Home Essentials You’ll Need While Moving In
Are you moving into an apartment for the first time or into your first home? In either case, there are some basic new home essentials you will need to function in your day-to-day life until you get your place all set up. Sometimes moving and settling into a new home can be a lengthy process. This could be due to budget reasons (getting a new place and moving isn’t cheap!), deciding on decor, furniture delivery (and assembly when applicable), and finding time for shopping trips to your favorite home goods stores amidst work and your already hectic daily schedule.
However, your daily life still has to function until all these larger items and details come together and you’re fully moved in. For this to happen, there are certain items you need and use regularly that you might not think about. That is, until you need one of these essentials and realize it’s not there. You don’t want to be trying to celebrate your first night in your new home with a bottle of wine, only to find out you don’t even have a corkscrew to open the bottle!
What you’ll need
To avoid frustration, unproductively handicapping yourself, and multiple unnecessary back-and-forth trips to the store, we’ve compiled a list of the most common new home essentials you’ll need to function daily until you get all settled in. This list is by no means exhaustive of everything a home needs in general (literally hundreds of items when you really think about it). But by getting all these items in one shopping trip to have available from Day One of your moving-in process, your daily life will remain functional and be much less inconvenienced in the meantime.
Here are the most common new home essentials to have on hand when you first move in categorized by area.
- Kitchen
- Bathroom
- Bedroom
- Living room
- Laundry room
- Cleaning closet and around the house
- General well-being
1. Kitchen
It is widely accepted that the kitchen is arguably the most important room in a house. It is a central hub of daily life that’s used by all family members. Depending on your lifestyle and diet, new home essentials for daily life might be subjective. For example, if it’s important that you make a greens smoothie every morning, a blender would be an essential item. However, some people could go months without ever needing a blender so this item wouldn’t be categorized as essential for them. The same could be said for a coffee maker.
That being said, there are some general, basic items almost anyone needs to function in a kitchen regardless of lifestyle that are essential to have on hand. While you’re getting your home set up, you’ll probably not be cooking any elaborate meals and sticking to more rudimentary recipes instead, or even take out. Either way, having these items will help.
- Can opener
- Bottle opener/wine corkscrew
- Basic dishes, cutlery, and cooking utensils
- Scissors
- Knife and cutting board
- Basic pots and pans
- Dish soap and sponges
- Dishtowel
- Trash can and trash bags
2. Bathroom
When it comes to basics in the bathroom, you just need a few new home essentials to make sure you can take a shower and do your business. All other accessories and add-ons you enjoy can wait, but these items are particularly essential to your basic tasks.
- Shower curtain, liner, and rings
- Bath mat
- Plunger
- Toilet bowl cleaner and brush
- Towels
- Hand soap and hand towels
- Toilet paper
3. Bedroom
You might be surprised how long you can actually make it without basic furniture in your home like sofas, chairs, bookshelves, etc. However, the one furniture item that is being added to this list of new home essentials is a comfy bed with appropriate bedding and pillows.
Getting a good night’s sleep and adequate rest is critical to your health and most other things in your life. So while you can live without a sofa for a while, it is essential that you make sure you have a comfy place to rest your head at night from Day One. Here are a few other things you’ll need in your bedroom.
- Comfy bed and bedding
- Hangers
- Full-length mirror
- Hamper
4. Living room
While the living room becomes one of the centrally important common rooms of the home once you’re settled, there are actually not many things in the living room that are absolutely necessary for daily life. You can live without a television or a coffee table for a while. However, what we are adding to this list of new home essentials for your living room is some form of window coverings.
Whether you get curtains or blinds, you’ll want some form of privacy from the peeping eyes of new neighbors. Spending even just one evening in your new home without proper window coverings can make you feel highly uncomfortable and exposed.
- Window coverings
5. Laundry room
You have a new home now and are not homeless, so don’t look like you are! Whether you’re lucky enough to have a laundry room in your home or it’ll be the laundromat for you, you will need to maintain your laundry and the appearance of your clothing. Make sure you have these new home essentials on hand to keep up with your laundry during the moving process.
- Laundry detergent and bleach
- Dryer sheets
- Laundry basket
- Iron and ironing board
6. Cleaning closet and around the house
There are several items you should have on hand when moving into a new home that come in handy. For example, if you’re getting furniture that requires assembly or hanging pictures on the wall, you’ll need tools. And there are lots of little emergencies that can be solved with duct tape. Additionally, you need to maintain a clean home while you move in, making a few basic cleaning items new home essentials as well. Here are several handy items to have around the home and basic cleaning tools you’ll need while settling in.
- All-purpose/multi-surface cleaner
- Cleaning rags
- Broom and dustpan
- Mopping tool and bucket (if required)
- Floor cleaner
- Paper towels
- Flashlight and batteries
- Lighter
- Tool set
- Duct tape
- First aid kit
7. General well-being
Lastly, moving into a new home is exciting, but the transition process and settling in can also be stressful in many aspects especially when it takes a while. It can leave you feeling uprooted, unsettled, and out of place until you have everything set up the way you want so the new place feels like home. Therefore, in the meantime, new home essentials include some little touches to make things feel homier to you until the move-in process is complete. Here are a couple of things that might help, but feel free to add other items that make things feel homey to you!
- Candles
- House plants
- Fresh-cut flowers
Are you considering moving into a new home? Give Ruth Stultz a call to see how she can help! Ruth Stultz is a highly experienced realtor who understands Lake Conroe and Montgomery County better than anyone. When it comes to the sale of your current home or finding the perfect property with everything you want, Ruth knows exactly where to look. You can trust Ruth Stultz with buying and selling your home.
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