As part of our move across the country, we downsized quite a bit. Now that we are settling in to our new apartment home, we are realizing that, even though we have most of what we need (arriving today), the reality is that there are still quite a few things that we require.
Whenever you move, no matter how prepare you think you are, there are always a few more things that you probably need. Here are some of the things that we discovered we needed when we arrived at our empty apartment:
Food
In our old home, we had a bit of food storage built up, and we had all the condiments we needed. However, we didn’t bring the food with us. Who wants to schlep a half-empty ketchup bottle across the continent? We ended up needing to re-stock all of those types of essentials. And, of course, we had our “regular” grocery shopping to do as well. The result was an initial grocery bill that provided us with something very similar to “sticker shock.” Of course, things should settle down a bit now that we are settling in.
Cleaning Supplies
Again, bringing half-empty cleaning supplies across the country didn’t seem like a reasonable use of space. The movers wouldn’t allow such things on the truck, and we didn’t want to take up limited space in our cars with partially used cleaning supplies. So we are buying things like toilet brushes, cleaners, and kitchen sponges on this end. It’s been a little more expensive than we expected, but we luckily have enough of a cushion that it’s working out just fine.
Random Things for the Home
Once again, we have been foiled by the shower curtain. No matter how many times we move, we always forget about the shower curtain. Whether we are moving into a rental, or buying a home, we always find ourselves rushing off to the store late at night to buy a shower curtain.
Since we are moving into a rental this time, we have the window treatments already. But when we bought our home seven years ago and moved in, we realized that we didn’t have anything to cover the windows. We made do for a night, and then went to the store first thing in the morning to buy window treatments and the items needed to hang them.
There are other random items you might need in the home, including lights if your home doesn’t have in-ceiling fixtures, and other random, missing hardware. Before you assume that you have everything you need, it makes sense to complete a walk-through if you can.
And, of course, make sure you set aside a small fund that you can use to make purchases as things come up. Often, it takes a couple of weeks to identify all of the things you are used to having in your home. You don’t realize you need that extra chair until company shows up, or you find that you are missing a tool that you require. Having a bit of a slush fund to cover these incidentals as they arise can be a good way to avoid breaking the bank when you move.
