Moving tips - Setting up a new house can be cheap and easy!

Moving houses can be a love-hate feeling. I personally hate all the packing and the move itself but I absolutely love putting everything in place once I’m in the new place.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve had to do this process a few times now and I’m about to do it again in a month’s time (hopefully for the last time until I actually can afford to buy my own house).

After all these years of moving around I’ve learned a lot on how to save money and how to make a rental house homely so I thought I’d share some of my tips with you guys.

Two or three months before the move

• Start packing. Yes, I know it seems crazy to start packing a couple of months before the actual move but trust me, it’ll make things a hell of a lot easier when you’re stressing out on the very last week.
• Buy any furniture/appliances you might need. If you buy them gradually you won’t have to spend a lot of money in one chunk just before moving in. Jac and I started buying stuff for our new house before Christmas! 
• Think carefully about the things you want to take to your new house and what you don’t. 
• You don’t want it? Sell it. Car boots sales, ebay, secondhand shops, etc. They’re all good options to get rid of the stuff that you don’t longer need/want and they’ll give you quite a bit of money to buy things for your new home. If you're lucky enough to not have to think about money, give it to charity.
• Buy things for your new house with the money you get from selling your old stuff. I always get new kitchen utensils and new bedding. 
• Visit charity shops. You can find little treasures for your new home that even though someone has used them before, they’re brand new to you. 

A couple of weeks before the move

• Continue packing. By this time you’ve probably packed things that you don’t use daily, now start packing all your clothes, jewelery, shoes, etc. Leave out what you know for definite you’ll be using for the next couple of weeks.
• Arrange the move; car if you don’t have one, ask a friend or family to help you, or hire a van for the day if needed.
• Book time off work. Moving’s a very stressfull time and you need time to do it. Yes, you might be able to move all your stuff in just one day but putting everything in place can take you days and even weeks.
• Check with your landlord or agency (if rented) that everything will be definitely good to go and arrange a time to pick up your keys.
• Start checking out what companies have the best deals for internet, electricity, gas, light, etc. 
• Once you decide what internet/tv company you want, ring them up and set up an installation day (I recommend the day after the move).
• Check with your landlord if you’re allowed to paint the walls and if he says you are give him a big hug. Trust me, painting the walls will make your new house feel like it’s your home.

Day before the move

• Finish packing the essentials; toiletries, food that you might have left in the cupboards, make up, etc.
• Get your clothes for the next day ready so you don’t have to look through all the boxes to find something to wear.
• Go to Poundland or any very cheap shops and get cleaning stuff. You’ll need it.
• Move all your boxes as close to the front door as you can. In my case it’s my living room. Stack them all against the wall so you still have some space to move around.
• Get a take away and go to bed early. At this point you should’ve packed all the kitchen stuff so getting a take away seems like the simplest option. Then get a good night sleep, you have a few long days ahead of you.

Moving day

• Get up early. This is probably the most important thing, if you wake up at 2 in the afternoon you’ll have wasted half a day and you’ll have to rush for the rest of the day.
• Start putting all your boxes (or as many as you can) in the van/car.
• Pick up your new keys.
• If you have to do everything in one day, move all your stuff into the living room of your new home and again, stack it all against a wall.
• Go back to your old house, make sure you haven’t left anything behind and clean it. I know you don’t want to clean your old house, you want to go and play in your new home but it’s very important that you leave that place exactly the way it was when you first move in. It’ll give you good references in the future if you ever need them and you should get the full amount of your bond back.
• There is a lot of cleaning involved on the moving day. Go to your new house and scrub everything. Surely the landlord should’ve got the place professionally clean but I still like to clean it myself too, wouldn’t want to start a new life somewhere filthy! 
• By this time it is probably night and you haven’t even had time to unpack but no worries, as long as your bedding’s out and you can get a good night sleep everything will be fine.

Days after moving day

• Set up your council tax and other utility bills for the new house.
• Again, get up early and paint whatever walls you might want to paint. If you do room by room, by the time you finish the last one you’ll be able to unpack the stuff that goes in the first room you’ve painted.
• Set up all the new furniture and move it around a few times and decide where you like it best.
• Finish unpacking. It can take days to do that so take it slow and don’t stress too much. 
• It’s most likely that you’ll end up finding things that you didn’t want there so again, sell them or give them to charity.
• Make sure your house has all your little home comforts that will make it your own.
• And last but not least, enjoy your new decorated home. Sit back, relax, appreciate what you’ve been doing for the last few days and make the most of your new home!

Other useful tips

• Visit Pinterest for inspiration.
• Do as much DIY as you can to save money. (Again, Pinterest is amazing for DIY's)
• Buy cheap things to start with and when you can afford to get better things replace them slowly.

I hope some of these tips are helpfull and feel free to comment if you'd like to share some tips of your own!

Adios amigas!

There is no place like home...

My boyfriend and I are moving in together in a couple of months and believe it or not, we’ve already started buying a million things for our new place. We want to make this rented apartment our home, very personal and comfortable.

Let’s start with some images of the two floor apartment we’ll be moving in. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the photos. I shall take better ones once we move in.

The Living Room

First, I must say that as soon as we walked in there the first time I fell in love with the laminated floor. Being originally from Spain, I’m used to tiled and laminated floors and I absolutely hate carpet. I do understand that in the UK sometimes it's almost necessary because of the weather and surely it makes the place warmer but me and carpets just don’t get along. I guess I rather have cold feet than having to hover every day and being careful not to drop anything in a very clear coloured carpet.

One thing I dislike about the living room is the big red wall at the end by the stairs. Red’s definitely not the color I would chose for my living room. I find it a little bit too aggressive and I will be asking our landlord if we’re allowed to paint that wall over. Hopefully he’ll say yes and if he does say that we’re allowed to paint it I’d probably go for a grey-blue color. I especially like the Jamestown Blue shown below.

We will also be getting rid of the most of the furniture as we have our own. Jac has a ridiculously big collection of DVD’s, CD’s and videogames so we bought a huge shelve unit to display them all. I’d prefer to keep them hidden but we couldn't really find anything else suitable for the place. I also have plenty of books so we’ll be displaying them too.

We’ve decided I wouldn’t do the living room ‘too girly’ and it’s looking very hard for me not to because everything I want to buy for it is girly!

The Kitchen

The kitchen is very small, we’d be lucky if four people fits in it but then again, it won’t be very often when there are four people in our kitchen.

I adore white kitchens with wooden surfaces and even though we can’t appreciate it on this photo, there is plenty of storage room behind the door too which will be handy because I seem to have an obsession with kitchen utensils.

I love the fact that everything in this kitchen is brand new too.

The bedrooms

There are two bedrooms in this apartment. The first one is the one me and Jac will be sharing as it’s the master bedroom. Again, we’ll be getting rid of all the furniture but the bed.

I have my own make up dresser and drawers and this room has not one but two build-in closets so we won’t need much more furniture.

Unfortunately I haven’t got photos of the bathroom but to be honest, it’s nothing special until I make it pretty!

I will be posting a wish list for the house very soon too.

What do you think of our new house? Any suggestions or ideas to make it ‘ours’? I’d love to hear them so please leave your comments and don’t forget to follow me on bloglovin’! J

Adiós amigos!