So you’ve arrived in your new home, in Hammersmith, close to the city of London, and you are surrounded by boxes, where do you even start with the unpacking? What most people do, mainly in excitement to get settled in, is to start pulling things out of boxes with little thought and creating chaos in the process. There are some things that you can do straight away to help you settle in a bit and have everything you need, the rest can be done over a space of days, weeks, even months if you wanted too. Avoid rushing into unpacking, you will most likely just add more stress to an already drawn out moving day.

Before you move into your new home, get a blueprint of the building and start planning where things are going to go. This will help you when you unpack things as you will be able to place them exactly in the right place straight away. Furniture, especially can be planned well in advance, even without the blueprints you can get an idea as to what will go where. If you do not have blue prints, visit the property and sketch out the layout, try to draw it to scale as much as possible.

When you are packing your old home ready for the move, consider how you pack. Put things in boxes specific to where it is going to go, so for example, pack everything from your desk in a box and label it desk. When you get to the new home then, you can unload the desk and place that according to your plans and then simply place the box filled with the desks contents on top of that, as it is not essential there is no need to unpack right away.

Pack together an essentials box with things like a kettle and tea/coffee, some easy meals and utensils etc. for everyone, snacks and drinks, hand towels, bed linen etc. This is the first thing you should unpack in your new home.

Unpack your child’s room first and get them settled in as much as possible. If you have an older child, they may want to unpack themselves, and if you feel comfortable you should let them do so, so that they feel like they have control over some things.

Ensure that all of the appliances that you need are fully operational, this includes making sure the cooker is working, the electricity is on and powering the fridge etc. Unpack all of your kitchen essentials, get out everything you will need in order to be able to eat, store the food that you have ready for the next 24-48 hours.

Make up all the beds in the house so that everyone has somewhere to sleep, hang curtains throughout the house so that you can all have some privacy from the outside world. Put some bathroom essentials in the bathroom, things like soap, towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, medicines and a shower curtain.

Get the main furniture, such as the sofa, television, any sideboards, bookcases, wall units etc. in place first, once you’ve started unpacking the smaller stuff you may not have room to manoeuvre these. This will make it easier to unpack the smaller things, for example books can be placed directly on the bookshelf rather than piles on the floor waiting to go on the bookcase.

Anything that isn’t essential or needed in the next few days, can be unpacked another day, with the larger items in place and the ability to eat, drink, wash and sleep, you have already settled in, therefore there is no need to rush the rest. Unpack in your own time.