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Pack with Unpacking In Mind

Your first step in the unpacking process actually begins while you’re packing to leave your old home. Unpacking will be much easier–and quicker–if you follow a few rules:

• Label your boxes. It will make life easier for you and any removal company you’ve hired. 
• Keep boxes specific to a room. Don’t load a box with a mix of kitchen items and bathroom pieces for example.
• Pack everything you need to make your bed in one box. Pillows, blankets, and sheets should all stay together. Repeat the step for each room, so you have a set of easily accessible boxes to set up your beds on your first night home. 
• And pack an "OPEN FIRST" box. This should have all the stuff  you need to get through the first 24 hours in your new home: a fresh set of clothes, your toothbrush, a roll of toilet paper, and any medications. 

Put Boxes in Their Appropriate Rooms

This one seems logical, so it should be easy.  When unloading your boxes, put them directly in the room where their contents belong. It’s much easier to do this on moving day, when you’re already moving boxes and are willing to lift heavy boxes a little bit further.

Your First Room To Unpack: the Bathroom

Living without a bathroom is not fun, so it’s best to get unpacking it out of the way first.

We don’t mean unpack every single towel you own.  Spare towels that belong in the linen cupboard can be unpacked later, so set them aside. But getting the essentials set up–your shower curtain, toiletries, toothbrush, toilet roll and soap–will make your bathroom livable and keep you focused on just that room. 

Room 2: Your Bedroom

Now that you’ve got a place to get clean, it’s time to unpack your bedroom. Start by arranging your furniture how you want it, as it will be much easier to do now than when your stuff is added to it. Then, find the box with all your bedding that you packed earlier. Make your bed so that even if nothing else gets done, you have a bed ready at the end of the day. 

Once your bed is set up, clothes will naturally come next, but don’t worry about perfectly hanging each and every piece. Unpack the essentials–your daily ware and any items that need to be hung up ASAP–for the time being, then come back for the rest on a later day.

If you have kids or live-in relatives, unpack their bedrooms next using the same methods. Then, you can move onto your next room.....

The Kitchen

The kitchen might just be the least liked room to unpack in a home. It’s perhaps the most compartmentalized room, so there is a lot to unpack and organize in it. Before you start opening boxes, it’s a good idea to figure out how you’ll set it up.

To make this easy on yourself, you could slap a blank sticky note on each cabinet and drawer. Then mark each note with what items you want in that space.  Once everything is labelled, just unpack and place your items in their designated spot. 

Next, Set Up Your Living Room

You’re more than halfway there! The most difficult rooms in the house are done! Now, you get to move onto the fun rooms, starting with your living space. 

Unpacking your living room is a task that can easily prove distracting, as this is likely where you keep most of your entertainment: video games, books, movies, etc...  If you know you’ll get distracted by this, leave this task for last and finish unpacking in the other rooms in the house first instead.

Unpack Your Home Office

If you have a home office, not only are there office supplies to sort, there’s internet to set up, computers and printers to get connected, and likely a few more bookshelves with distracting books.  Start with the big things and wind your way down to the smaller stuff. Set up your electronics and furniture before you unpack small office supplies and optimize your desk arrangement.  Leave any certificates/awards etc... in their box for now–we’ll come back to these in the decor phase.

Next Up: The Guest Bedroom

You’re almost done–your guest room is the last room you’ll unpack, and you’ve already learned the right order for this. Start with the furniture arrangements, then unpack your bed, followed by any clothing and other items, just like you did for your bedroom. 

If your spare room is also home to some long-term storage, keep that in mind while you’re unpacking.  Keep space set aside in that room while unpacking for other long-term storage pieces to avoid running out of space later.

Wardrobes & Excess Items

By now, you’re down to just decor and excess stuff. Set aside the decor and focus on the last bit of major unpacking in the process: wardrobes.

Linen cupboards, spare storage and bulk items are your next focus. Go back and get the extra towels from when you were unpacking your bathroom and hunt down that box of out-of-season clothes you set aside while doing your bedroom. Take these items out and unpack them where you’d like them to live–in a hallway cupboard, in your spare room, wherever–until the only thing left to unpack is decor. 

Decorate Your New Home

The final step: decorating. obviously this is an optional step, as you may not be changing the decor and if you are, you certainly don’t have to do it today. Some experts recommend living in your home for at least a month before you start decorating to get a true feel of the place.