Unpack in the right order
The van has gone and the house is full of boxes. What happens over the next few weeks decides whether the new place feels like home by Christmas or still feels like somewhere you are staying.
Start with the rooms that make the house liveable, not the ones that make it look finished.
- Beds, made up, on the first night if you possibly can.
- Bathroom — towels, toiletries, loo roll, medication.
- Kitchen — kettle, mugs, plates, cutlery, a pan, and enough to cook one meal.
- Clothes for the next week, and anything needed for work.
- Anything for children or pets, early, because their routine settling helps yours.
Then stop for the night. Everything else can wait, and trying to finish the whole house on day one is how people end up exhausted and demoralised in a room full of half-emptied boxes.
After that, work room by room rather than box by box. Finishing one room completely gives you somewhere to sit that is not chaos, which matters more psychologically than getting a bit of everything done.
Do not decorate yet
The strong temptation on arrival is to start changing things. Resist it for a few weeks.
You do not yet know where the morning light falls, which room is coldest, where the draughts are, where everyone naturally congregates, or whether the layout you planned on paper works in practice. Almost everyone who paints in the first fortnight repaints later.
Live in it first. The exception is anything you cannot do once furniture is in place — floor sanding, a full room repaint, or work needing scaffolding — which is better done before you properly move in, and is a good reason to keep the contents in storage for a few weeks rather than moving twice.
The boxes you never open
Every house has them: the boxes that are still taped shut a year later, usually in the loft or the spare room.
They are worth a decision rather than a permanent home. A simple test: if it has not been opened in six months, you did not need to move it. Sell, donate or recycle the contents, or if it is genuinely something you want but have no room for, put it in storage properly rather than letting it colonise a bedroom.
The same applies in reverse. If a box has been unopened since your last move, it survived two house moves without being needed. That is information.
If someone else is unpacking for you
Unpacking services exist and are genuinely useful for large households, tight timescales, or anyone who cannot do the lifting. Crews will unpack, place, and take away the empty boxes and paper, which is often the part people underestimate.
One sensible precaution, and it was the one worthwhile idea in the original version of this article: mark the boxes you want to unpack yourself. Personal paperwork, financial documents, medication, anything private. Write "personal, do not unpack" on the side, and set those aside for yourself.
This is not about distrust. It is that some things are simply easier if you put them where they go, and a good crew will thank you for the clarity rather than take offence.
Getting the house working
Most of the practical first-week jobs — finding the stopcock, testing alarms, meter readings, changing the locks — are covered in our guide to the checklist movers forget, which is worth ten minutes on day one.
Beyond that, the settling-in jobs that are easy to postpone indefinitely:
- Register with a GP and dentist locally, before you need one
- Find out the bin days and which bin is which
- Sort parking permits if you are in a controlled zone
- Locate the fuse box, stopcock and gas valve, and photograph them
- Work out where things live — recycling, bikes, the hoover, the ironing board. Houses that never get this decided stay cluttered
Settling in takes longer than the move
Moving is consistently ranked among the more stressful things people do, and the stress does not end when the van leaves. It is normal for a new house to feel wrong for a while, even when it is objectively better than the old one. Familiarity is doing a lot of work in what "home" feels like, and it takes months, not days.
Some things that genuinely help:
- Put familiar objects out early. Photographs, the same mugs, the throw off the old sofa. Continuity matters more than newness.
- Keep routines, particularly for children. Same bedtime, same story, same breakfast.
- Let pets settle one room at a time rather than giving them the run of the house immediately, and update the microchip address.
- Walk the neighbourhood. Find the shop, the pub, the park, the route to the station. Knowing where things are converts a location into a place.
- Say hello to the neighbours in the first week, while being new is still a reason to.
- Accept a period of not feeling settled. It passes, and expecting it makes it easier.
Frequently asked questions
What should I unpack first when moving into a new house? Beds, the bathroom, and enough kitchen equipment to make a drink and cook one meal. Then clothes for the week, and anything children or pets need. Work room by room after that rather than opening everything at once.
How long does it take to settle into a new home? Weeks to months rather than days. Familiarity is most of what makes a house feel like home, and it accumulates with routine. Feeling unsettled at first is normal even when the move was the right decision.
Should I decorate straight after moving in? Usually not. Live in the house for a few weeks first, so you know how light, heat and traffic actually move through it. Work that cannot be done with furniture in place is the exception, and is better done before you move in.
What should I do with boxes I have not unpacked? Set a six-month test. Anything unopened by then was not needed, so sell, donate or recycle it, or put it into storage properly rather than leaving it occupying a room.
Can removal companies unpack for you? Many do, including placing items and removing the empty boxes and packing material afterwards. Mark anything personal that you would rather handle yourself before the crew starts.
How do I help children and pets settle after a move? Keep routines unchanged, unpack their things first, and put familiar objects out early. Introduce pets to one room at a time before giving them the whole house, and update microchip and tag details with the new address.
How we can help
RMV Storage & Removals has moved households across London for over fifteen years, with house and office removals, packing and unpacking services, materials delivered to your door and container storage for whatever does not fit yet, across every area we cover including Barnet and North London.
If the move is still ahead of you, the moving house checklist covers the sequence and the night before covers the last twenty-four hours. Otherwise get in touch.
Written by Riki Migliori, Director at RMV Storage & Removals. Originally published November 2015. Fully reviewed and updated summer 2026.