No matter the stage of your relationship, living together is a big commitment. From agreeing on a house and hiring movers to assigning chores and calculating expenses, a number of considerations go into the seamless blending of households. While our movers in Wichita aren’t exactly marriage counselors, we know a thing or two about moving and have helped many couples overcome challenges to creating successful homes together. Here are several tips for couples who will be sharing a home for the first time.
Agree On Where To Live
Once you’ve decided to live together, the next step to choosing where your home will be. House hunting can be a challenging process that introduces stress into a relationship. Don’t let it. Instead, take time early to figure out logistical matters, so you can focus on love and happiness thereafter.
Here are helpful questions to ask while finding a place to call home:
- Will one person move in with the other?
- Or will you both find a new place?
- How much space will you need?
- How will the rent or mortgage get paid between you?
- If you both work or attend school, what is the commute like for each of you?
Consolidate & Rightsize Belongings
When you merge two households, often the trickiest part is finding space for everyone’s items. A cramped and disorganized environment can put a damper on any relationship, and animosity can grow if one partner sacrifices more of his or her belongings than the other. One way to prevent clutter at home is rightsizing before you move.
Rightsizing is a professional downsizing service offered by our moving company in Wichita. It involves sorting your items into keep, throw-away, and sell piles. Consider how often those clothes in the back of your closet get worn or those kitchen utensils in the bottom cabinets get used. Rightsizing helps you to free space by eliminating unnecessary items. You may even raise some extra money to pay off moving expenses by selling your best stuff second-hand.
Join In Each Other’s Lifestyles
Couples who plan to live together can benefit from having a plan-of-action for how they’ll combine their lifestyles. In contrast to living apart and seeing one another periodically, living together means you are immersed in that other person’s daily existence. It’s normal to have differences between you, just so long as they don’t become disputes. To establish harmony, do tasks, such as unpacking moving boxes, and hobbies, such as working out or gardening, together. Sharing experiences the other person likes to do gives you a deeper perspective on their personality, which creates greater empathy, cooperation, and often attraction.
Divide House Chores
Chores should be distributed evenly to ensure both people in a relationship feel like equals. You can work together on chores, assign chores, such as one person is in charge of laundry and the other vacuuming, or alternate weekends for cleaning. How you divide the labor isn’t what’s important, but it’s that everyone feels it’s equitable for all sides.
Have A Plan For Paying Bills
Even the closest couples can be driven apart by money squabbles. To avoid being a cautionary tale, have your financial arrangements figured out ahead of time. From hiring professional movers to paying rent, setting up utilities to paying car insurance, expenses may seem to rise up out of every corner. Don’t let them overtake you. Instead, keep a list of the bills, and agree on a fair breakdown for paying them. One approach is to have each partner pay bills proportionate to their income; in other words, the higher earner pays slightly more each month.
At Rightsize Moving Solutions, we’ve helped all kinds of couples move throughout the Wichita area. From full-service relocations to specialty moving services, such as packing and rightsizing, let us help you begin your new life together.