Planning Your First Apartment: Checklist & Suggestions
I am sharing tips & suggestions for Planning Your First Apartment. Additionally, a free, printable checklist will help make moving to a first apartment successful.
Our home is a home of transitions right now. We have one child setting up her first solo apartment as she heads off to medical school and the other one moving into his first apartment with three other young men as he enters his junior year of college.
Our dining room is the staging area as we go through stuff we have set aside for both of them and figure out what is going with whom. It is, without a doubt, chaos, but exciting chaos!
This will be our seventh move setting up our fledglings in their own living space, mostly in dorms, with a few furnished apartments thrown in. Along the way, we have learned how to make this process as efficient and painless as possible.
Suggestions to Make Planning For Your First Apartment Efficient
Plan, Plan,Plan and Organize, Organize, Organize
Get a floorplan of the apartment and place the furniture. Some websites let you put in the dimensions of your rooms so that you can interactively place your furniture.
Table of Contents
Having a list of what you have and what you need is critical. We are list makers in this house, and you can grab the list we are using here. Alternately, subscribers to Nourish and Nestle can access the First Apartment Checklist in the Subscriber Benefits Library.
Think about what you like to cook and then make a list of all the items you would need to make that dish. We ran through some of their favorite meals and made sure that our kids had what they needed to make those meals.
For instance, if you wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies you would need a baking sheet, a bowl, a silpat or parchment paper, a mixing spoon, a mixer, measuring cups and spoons, and a metal spatula.
Related to that last point, scan or copy some of their favorite recipes so that they can replicate family meals in their new apartment.
You could send the recipes as a digital file or as hard copies.
Start a list of items you want to purchase after you move in.
Label Everything!
When my kiddos and their belongings have come home between school years or between lodgings, we clean, repack and label everything. Labeling makes the process of figuring out what they have and what they need several months later much more time-efficient.
Shop online and pick up where the apartment or school is.
This year, we are doing a bit of everything; we have had some items delivered to our home now, and we will pick up other necessities when we get to their schools.
Bookmark this page or pin the following image to refer back to this post on Planning for a First Apartment, with the tips and checklist.
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Until next time…
Planning my move to an assisted living facility in the future year will take advantage to your list 🤗
Oh good Mary! In fact, we just went through that process with my mom and you may find this post on downsizing helpful as well. https://nourishandnestle.com/downsizing-tips/
Wishing you a great day, my friend.
Hugs,
Lynn
Love your tips, we don’t have a big move planned but even for moving my younger kids from one room to another as we consolidate these are great tips. Thank you.
They’ll be heading to college before you know it!
How I wish I had your list when my kids moved to Canada. What chaos, not only were they moving millions of miles away, but I didn’t have a clue what was or wasn’t available on that side of the world. I could have done so many things for them shopping virtually on-line and given them a better start in their dorms. Pinning for next time when they move into their own little homes.
Wow…can imagine doing that move across continents! Definitely need a checklist for that!
What a great post and so handy to have a list all drawn up. When you move there will always be items your forget. This list will help tremendously.
Thanks Anita. The lists and checklists save us for sure!
Wish I had this for my first place 🙂
It has taken me a while to figure out how to keep myself (and my world) organized. Making lists and checklists works for us!
This is so wonderfully organized! I think I’m going to have a peek at your downsizing tips too! Thank you for sharing! xo
You are so welcome, Laurie. I live by my lists and this was a handy one!
I have such fond memories of my first apartment! This is a great list – and would have been helpful for me and my friends way back when 🙂
Hi Heather,
Right?! Wish I had put it together several moves ago. But since I don’t think either of them are quite settled yet, I think I’ll have plenty of opportunities to use it.
Hugs,
Lynn