It’s a huge milestone in your life, but few would disagree that moving house is incredibly overwhelming.
In theory, it all seems like a simple process, but once solicitors start to get involved things start to venture off track pretty quickly.
It means that when the day does come for you to move into your house, it can be difficult to know where to start. This is where today’s article comes into play, as we take a look at some of the key areas you should look at during those first few days in your new home.
Tackle the carpets
You’ve housed your belongings at one of the many storage facilities around – but don’t take it out just yet. Before you kit your new home out with furniture, both new and old, try and tackle the carpets.
Sure, the estate agent who has been handling the transaction may have suggested that the house has been professionally cleaned – but we’d guess that the carpets aren’t falling into this category. These are usually forgotten about, or even ignored, and we all know about the types of germs that can linger in there.
Tackle these before your furniture is in and you’ll find that’s a much quicker and potentially cheaper task.
Read the meters
In fairness, energy companies are getting better with this and will grant some leeway when a house comes under new ownership.
However, it’s still your duty to supply meter readings on the day you move into your property. You’ve already wracked up countless costs during your move, so the last thing you need is to take on some of the previous owner’s bills.
Sort out your mail
In the grand scheme of things, this is another of those smaller tasks that often gets forgotten about.
However, failing to deal with your mail can be a problem that impacts you for months on end. Sure, you may have contacted the so-called essential companies; with the likes of energy and your bank tending to fall into said category.
Unfortunately, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. If you don’t let everyone know, you’ll soon find that your weekly mail levels start to decrease. Sometimes this will be gladly accepted, but on other occasions a lot of important information will go missing.
Of course, contacting everyone is probably not going to be possible and some will always fall through the net. As such, consider setting up a redirect. If you leave it ticking over for six months, you’ll still receive all of your mail – and find out other companies that you need to notify.
Test everything you can find
Granted, you’ve now bought your home and you can’t legally claim anything from the previous owners (at least, in most cases).
This doesn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t test everything though. For example, let’s take the alarm. This is something that will already have a keycode associated to it and if you leave it too long to test, there’s every chance that the previous owners, or estate agent, won’t be able to help.
The same rules apply for appliances such as the built-in washing machine, dishwasher and even the boiler. There might be “hidden” tricks to get them functioning as expected – and by doing this as early as possible you should be able to retrieve the necessary information from someone.
