Remember that feeling of finally arriving home after a huge overseas adventure or holiday, throwing your backpack or suitcase on the bed and then dreading the thought of unpacking everything? Well that’s a microcosm of what’s going to happen when you move into a new house. You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, packing your life up into boxes and suitcases. You’ve found an awesome removal company to help take the hard work out of getting everything from A to B. But now, here you are, in your new home, surrounded by your own Manhattan skyline of cardboard boxes, all ready to be packed away neatly.
Now, think back to that post-holiday scenario: the suitcase is on the bed. You’re exhausted from a long-haul flight. But your clothes need to be laundered and put away, and all the other contents need to be put back into their home. The way you handle the post-holiday unpacking could be a good indicator of how you’re likely to approach the unpacking when you move into your new house. Take a look at some of the unpacking archetypes, and see which one you’re likely to fall into, and more importantly, which one you would most want to be like:
1) The Jobsworth
Your cases barely touch the ground before you’ve opened them and started sorting the contents into ‘for laundry’ and ‘for wardrobe’. You can stick the kettle on and have everything sorted and put away before you even sit down to enjoy a cuppa. Presumably, when you move house, you’re likely to be the person who gets cracking straight away: you’ll be lifting the lid on all of your boxes one by one, and finding homes for everything before the first night in your new home is done.
2) The Strategist
You don’t just get stuck in – you like to think these things through first. When it comes to your holiday luggage, you’ve probably thought through everything on the flight home, and have made a mini-checklist of anything that needs to be dropped to the dry-cleaners on the way home from the airport. Likewise, when it comes to moving house, you will have the logistics all mapped out. You’ll have an exhaustive list of the contents of every box, along with a map of where the boxes should be placed in the new house. If you’re a true professional, you’ll probably have a column on the list outlining which piece of furniture will house the individual contents of every box. You’ve pretty much nailed this.
3) The Capitalizer
You know that there is a limited window of time that your energy and enthusiasm will last for, and you have to capitalise on that before it runs out. For instance, if it comes to unpacking your suitcase after your holiday, you know that if you get as much done as possible as soon as you walk through the door, it will make things a bit easier when you find that you really can’t be bothered to finish it off tomorrow. The same is true of your new home: you need to ride that zealous wave and harness your energy to get as much done as possible, before you finally crack open a beer and leave half of the boxes packed for the next six months.
4) The Steady Achiever
You know that the easiest way to eat and elephant is one bite at a time. So you tackle a little bit every day until the job is done. Whether it’s one box a day or ten boxes a day, you know that if you maintain a consistent effort, you’ll get through the workload. You’re unpacking becomes like a second job to you – just another task to incorporate into your working day.
5) The Slacker Unpacker
Let’s be honest: unpacking is not much fun at all. When you get back from overseas trips, you probably leave your suitcase half packed for a while. Or you just empty it directly into the laundry basket and wait for someone else to do the washing. And if you live on your own, the washing basket will stay full for a few weeks whilst you put off doing a couple of loads. So if we were to hazard a guess at your unpacking style when moving house, we would probably say that your boxes will remain untouched until the point when you can’t carry on without some, or all, of the contents – you’ll dip into them for the odd serving spoon or bread knife, but otherwise, you’ll push them into the corner and put off clearing the contents away, maybe even until the next time you move house. Either way, it’s always more fun, and much easier, to put your feet up and have a beer.
There’s a few different techniques there, but most people fall into one of these categories. If you see yourself here, and think you need a bit of guidance, try taking a couple of the best ideas and putting them together to create your own style of unpacker – make some lists, go in hard at the start but continue consistently on a day by day basis until the job is done, and of course, just like The Slacker Unpacker, remember to put your feet up and have a beer when all the hard work is done.