Falling in love is a great feeling. You have found special someone, and you’re seeing happy changes in your life. Inevitably time marches forward and you’re going from dating someone to moving in together! You’re standing on a precipice, meaning you have to make that leap of faith (no matter what, it’s always a leap of faith) … get together in one place or say goodbye. So when you reach the point where moving in with your partner is the next step, how do you begin? How do you prepare? Here are some moving tips for moving in with someone special.

Moving in with Your Significant Other

Take Inventory of All Your Stuff

When starting the moving process, you will quickly notice the large number of things you both possess. You and your partner will have duplicates of many items. Before you pick out a place to call home, you and your partner should take inventory of all your items and decide what you want to keep, to sell, to donate or just take to the trash. This saves you time and money in the long run as you will cut down on the number of things that need to be moved, regardless if you are doing it yourself or enlisting the help of a professional moving company.

Deciding Where to Live

Once you have culled all your items, the next step is to decide where you are going to live. Are you moving into your place, their place, or getting a new place altogether? This is a great time to communicate what you are looking for most in your new place. A shorter commute to work, parks or shops within walking distance, or accommodations for pets. This is an excellent start to the process of discussing your expectations for a new home.

How Do You Know if You’re Ready?

Moving in together as a couple is a big commitment that often makes people a little nervous and rightfully so. It’s a big step in your relationship and requires a lot of communication and trust. Here are a few signs that you and your significant other are ready to move in together.

You’ve Discussed Finances

Getting into fights about money is never a fun thing to do. The best way to go about avoiding this is to sit down and have a conversation about how you will handle the financial responsibilities you will now be sharing before you call the moving company. It’s not always the easiest topic to talk about, but it will be a lot better than getting into an argument about it somewhere down the road.

You’ve Survived a Vacation

Taking a vacation together as a couple is a fun way to test the waters of living together. Getting away from your normal lives for a week or even a few days can be a microcosm to show you what it will be like to live together. While it’s impossible to completely gauge how ready you are to live together from a short vacation, it will give some insight into how your partner makes decisions in their life and how compatible you may be.

You’ve Discussed the Future

Yes, we’re talking about the “Where is this going?” talk here. It’s important for you two to discuss things like marriage, life goals, and future desires so that both of you are clear on what the other one wants moving forward.

You’ve Survived a Big Fight

Families and roommates typically have heated disagreements and even fights. Couples are no exception and a fight is inevitable. When you spend a lot of time with someone and you are so heavily invested in emotions with them, you are bound to get into disagreements. The important thing here isn’t the fight or how bad the fight was; it’s how you resolved things afterward. Were there passive-aggressive comments or taking the argument to social media or the cold shoulder-deep freeze?  These are usually signs that you aren’t ready to move in together.

You’ve Discussed Deep and Personal Preferences

You always need to be able to compromise in a relationship, but even more so when you’re moving in together. Remember, this means you will be around your significant other for the majority of the time, even when you are at your worst. Be sure to discuss your preferences about cohabiting before you pack up and move. Communication is the most important part about moving in with your significant other.  As long as you remember that, you should be in the clear.

How to Make the Most Out of Moving in with Your Partner  

Get Rid of Some Stuff

Now that you’re moving in with someone else, you’re going to be splitting your load of stuff in half to accommodate their stuff. They’ll be doing the same. Take a look at all your stuff and evaluate—think to yourself, “Do I really need this?”

The first place to look is at your clothes. Often, we hoard our clothes. They’re harder to get rid of for some reason, and almost all of us are guilty. Moving in with your partner is about sacrifice. Toss some of the things that don’t serve bigger purposes. Take inventory of both of your homes and make the decisions together about what you’ll keep or toss. Once you and your partner clear out some space, you’ll be grateful you did.

Make Sure You Have Room 

You may be comfortable in a small studio apartment, but when you’re moving in with your partner, you have to account for not only them but their stuff, too. This may be more complicated than you think. Ponder really hard about it because just about every move-in story starts with the boyfriend bringing in something giant or the girlfriend bringing in too many of something.

Moving in with someone is all about planning ahead, meaning planning for all those times you’ll need to be alone. It’s important to have enough room for yourself to get some personal space every now and then.  And this is very difficult to achieve if you chose too small a living space to share. It’s understandable that by having a smaller living space, you’ll save money, so it’s smart in that sense. You just have to make sacrifices accordingly, such as getting rid of a lot of things you may not want to get rid of.

But aren’t relationships all about sacrifice?

Communication Is Key

Obviously, a relationship isn’t going to work if you and your significant other don’t communicate well. It cannot be stressed enough that clear communication is important, especially during the difficult transition of moving in together.

It’s vital that before you officially start living with a significant other that you should discuss money: your budget, your future finances, and your shared income. At this time, you should both agree on how rent is to be taken care of and how bills are to be split. This includes the Internet, utilities, groceries, etc.

This is also a good opportunity to discuss the future of your relationship: marriage, children, etc.

Recruit your Friends AND Their Friends

When it comes to moving, the more help you get, the better. So enlist the help of as many people as you can, including the nearby friends of both of you.

Once you have the help of your friends, stay organized, and assign certain tasks to people. If you or your partner have big heavy items like a piano or fine art, getting help is the best idea. Get as much help as you can for unpacking and setting everything up.

How to Make It Work

Give Each Other Necessary Space

Cohabiting sounds wonderful, and it is. But make no mistake, no matter how much you love someone and want to spend the rest of your living days with them, you will need your space now and then. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s a vital part of a relationship. Getting that space isn’t always easy, especially if you live in a small apartment. Lucky for your relationship’s health, you have a front door to your apartment.

Spend some time with friends or find activities outside your home where you can be a little more alone.

Communicate Throughout

Yeah, it’s no joke. Moving in with your partner comes with a guarantee of bickering. That’s fine; it’s completely normal. But your partner gets on your nerves, and when you have nowhere to go, are you just going to ignore the problem or are you going to discuss it with them?

Communication is key, and everyone will tell you that. Whatever problems come up from living together, it’s your duty to talk about how you feel and find solutions to the problems together. Avoid the hardest thing of all: moving out because of an avoidable break-up.

Share Responsibilities

Having household chores is not a role, nor is it the responsibility of just one person. Maybe you or your partner stays at home or works less. In this case, it’s important to talk about duties instead of making assumptions.

It’s important to share household responsibilities outside of work. Maybe one of you takes out the trash while the other does dishes after you eat. Pretty fair trade is if one person cooks the food, the other person does the dishes. Sharing duties doesn’t have to be a perfectly even split of responsibilities—the point is to communicate with your SO and decide what is most fair and best suited for each.

Make the Most Out of ANY Move

Red Carpet Moving Company is the Las Vegas moving company that’s all about making the most out of moving, whether you’re moving in with your partner or not. We want to reduce stress when you relocate. Contact us and let’s get planning your next high rise move.