So, You Just Moved to Philly. Now What?

Moving to a new city marks a fresh start in your life. If you’ve just bought a house in Philadelphia, you might find yourself surrounded by newness: new furniture, new home accessories to situate as you play around with decor, and a new job, new neighbors, new favorite places to eat. It’s going to take a while before you stop feeling like a tourist playing house – you have my permission to go run up the Art Museum steps and blast “Eye of the Tiger” on your phone – but eventually that “home” feeling will come.

When you’ve just moved, you are in a ripe position to make some changes to how you do things, all in the interest of making your “new life” cheaper, more convenient, or just cooler. The following are some tips for what you should change after you’ve moved… besides your mailing address, obviously!

Cut the fat in your budget.

Now is a great time, while you are changing your address in a million different places, to evaluate any subscriptions, mail-order clubs, or auto-renewal fees that are just sucking up dollars in your bank account. Let’s take magazine subscriptions, for instance. Who actually has time to sit down and read six of them every month? Not you, I’d bet. Prune them down to one or two that you genuinely love and promptly cancel the rest. The same goes for cable channel subscriptions that you ordered for one show that one time (I’m looking at you, HBO) and those pricey subscription beauty boxes that you end up just sifting through and never using the samples. You can put that saved money every month to something that will actually benefit your family, like, say, membership to the Philadelphia Zoo.

Say bye-bye to clutter.

Do your future self a favor: unpack ALL your moving boxes. We all know someone who is guilty of having to rummage through cardboard to find something they only occasionally need. Don’t let this person be you. As long as there are boxes piled up around you, your house will look like you just moved and not like a home. A good way to fight the battle of the boxes is to set a reasonable deadline for yourself after you’ve gotten the keys to the house. If you have some help, say maybe a week. If you and your spouse both have demanding jobs, say three months. No matter what, stick to your plan. It will pay off when everything you own is situated in its rightful place and y0u have the deeply-satisfying feeling of completion.

Make an energy-efficient change.

When you move, all your lamps come with you. When you’ve just moved and are unpacking, count the lamps and light fixtures in your home – yes, I realize that there is probably a whole lot of them – and make the change to energy-efficient lightbulbs. The price of these bulbs have come seriously down in the last few years, and not only will they make a dent in your electric bill, but they last for years, ensuring that you create less lightbulb waste. According to experts, outrigging your home with all LED lightbulbs can save a whopping thousand dollars over ten years on your electric bills!

Commit to tidiness.

Are you a person like me, who has trouble staying on top of household cleaning tasks? There is never a better time to start anew and create a doable tidying schedule than when you’ve just moved. With no furniture in your house or condo, deep-cleaning is a piece of cake. After that, it’s just a matter of sticking to a cleaning schedule and resolving to consistently put things where they belong when you find them elsewhere around the house. I know from experience that if you have kids or pets this can feel like it will take an act of God, but I assure you that once you commit to neatness, you will no longer feel that rush of panic when someone comes over to visit – your house will always be presentable.

Keep meticulous records.

Most people, when they buy a house, don’t intend to move from it any time soon. But life has a way of slinging curveballs at us, and there’s no telling when a stellar job offer will come in, you’ll plan a pregnancy and get surprise!twins (this happened to my best friend), or the housing market will have a growth spurt and you are tempted by a selling price you can’t refuse. So, to make things easier for yourself in the event that this day comes, make a habit of keeping paperwork on EVERYTHING in your house. That goes for appliances, major repairs like roofing or plumbing, and maintenance records.