Inspiration | News | Interior Decorating Tips | Wallpaper | May 23, 2016

Tips For Moving Into Your First Home

The long awaited move into our new off-plan flat in London finally happened, and thankfully it was not as difficult as I had anticipated. In my student years in England, I would move every year, and sometimes even every couple of months. Every time it was so painful, so this time I decided to get myself organised and try to make my life easier. Finding different sized, secure cardboard boxes is always a struggle, and usually ends up with endless trips to tesco begging for boxes. This inevitably means gaining a few un-appealing boxes that most probably won’t fit all of your belongings. With this in mind I went ahead and bought a house moving kit from ebay, including boxes, tape, bubble wrap, pen etc, which arrived promptly the next day. packaging boxes I asked my assistant to help me pack, as it is always better with two pairs of hands. We put on our ‘super organised’ hats and made some space for the boxes, leaving them all open until the last possible moment. We labeled all the boxes describing the contents and the area of the new flat they would belong to.This way when we were unloading the boxes, we were able to organise them into the correct rooms, which made the unpacking a lot easier. As you can see from the picture below, we didn't waste any time finding the peanut butter and other food items amongst the messy mountains of boxes.

A couple of weeks into living at our new property, we still haven’t completely unpacked, partially because we haven’t got the furniture yet. Even though we are still living out of boxes, I made sure to fill up the flat with plants and succulents, making our balcony breakfasts more enjoyable. Plants is a priority! We are now at the point of manically trying to order new furniture, which proves to be a challenge, as agreeing on the style of every piece of furniture with your partner is like debating life or death. Sometimes I find it easier to persuade my husband by creating a mock up, pairing different furniture with our chosen Winter Snowdrift wallpaper and flooring. If you are not familiar with photoshop, you can also cut out the pictures of the furniture you want, and place them next to pictures of your other pieces of furniture. Here is a mockup of the dining table and chairs. This was done before we moved in, and I created it by copying the floor from our developer’s image. Dining table with chairs When we moved in and remeasured the space the sofa we were initially going to get didn’t fit, so unfortunately we had to go back to the beginning and start the sofa search again. I made a few quick, not very precise mock ups of the different sofas in our space. sofa workshop Lady may in pelham rose sofadotcom option These beginning weeks living in our new place have been delightful. Our lovely dining table arrived from Maison Du Monde meaning we were able to have our first dinner in many, many years sat at a proper table and not bending over a coffee table. Our balcony has been flooded with sunlight in the mornings, which means we have been able to sit amongst our blooming flowers and eat breakfast at weekends. I am very excited to up my gardening game, and will soon be reporting back on what I have managed to grow or kill on my balcony. Trying to fill myself with green thumb confidence, I have put together a few inspirational balcony gardening images and tips on my 'Dream Blacony' pinterest board. Balcony If you have any experiences about moving into a new property or about balcony gardening, we would love to hear them! Like this post? Head over to our Pinterest page or follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to see more inspiring pictures and stories…