Are you planning on upsizing your home? Maybe you have a growing family who needs more space, you’ve inherited a larger home from your family, or have managed to enough value to your smaller home to help you afford a larger one. Moving into a larger home can be a very exciting change, but you might find you have a lot more space to fill and aren’t really sure what to do with it. It can be a lot of fun to daydream about what you’ll use all that extra space for, but reality can soon spoil the fun. A larger home will take a lot more time and money to decorate, furnish, and care for. Use these tips to help you work out how to manage all that extra space.
Wait Until You’ve Closed
Once you have had found a larger home that you love and make an offer, it can be very tempting to start shopping right away, especially if you know you’ve got more space to fill. However tempting it might be, try not to buy anything just yet. There are a lot of ways that a sale can fall through, and you don’t want to have bouts lots of furniture for a bigger house that you then have to try and squeeze into your small house before you can find another house to make an offer on. The more you buy, the more you’ll need the movers to move for you, pushing up the cost. Wait until the new house is definitely yours before you make any big purchases, and maybe even until you have moved on, so you can have your new things delivered straight to you.
Think Long Term
After you have been living in a smaller space for a long time, you might be anxious and excited to start using all your new space as soon as you can. However, try to remember that you will probably live in your new home for a long time to come. You don’t need to rush out and buy lots of new furniture and other things right away. You probably didn’t furnish your current home all in one go and gathered things over time. Your new home will be the same.
Take your time to get to know your new home, and see what it is like to live there, so you can start to see what new pieces you might need. For example, before you move, you might have some grand ideas for what you might use the spare bedroom before, but after a few months of living in your new home, you might change your mind about what the best use would actually be. Try to be patient, and remember that you have time to find what you like.
Don’t Overspend
Everyone wants their home to look like Pinterest or the interior design magazines, but remember to balance your dreams with your budget. Is it really worth overspending and running up your credit card bill just to make your home look like the ones on Pinterest? Buying a home is a big investment, especially if you’re spending more to buy a larger home. Don’t forget that if you have upsized, it’s likely that your bills will go up too, so you should be a bit sensible with your spending until you know how much more you will have to spend on running the house itself. A beautifully furnished home is a wonderful thing to have, but it’s not worth going into debt over. If you do need anything and can’t wait, look for secondhand pieces, so you don’t have to spend a lot to furnish your bigger home.
Don’t Be Afraid To Change Things Up
Moving into a new home is a great excuse to make some changes. Just because you’ve always used that side table in the dining room doesn’t mean that you can’t put it somewhere else in the new house. A new home is a good reason to experiment with some different places to put your things. When your first move in, spend a bit of time experimenting and moving things around to find a layout that you like.
Concentrate On The Most Important Spaces
It can be overwhelming to get started on decorating and furnishing a larger house, but you don’t have to tackle everything all at once. Maybe you’ve chosen to upgrade to a larger house so your children can have their own bedrooms instead of sharing, or because you need a home office now that you’re working from home more often. Maybe your new house has a great basement that you’re excited to have converted into a family room. It can be a lot of fun to daydream about all the different rooms in your new house, but try to get things into priority order. Concentrate first on the rooms that you spend the most time in. Sort your living room, the kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms first, before you move onto things like converting the basement. Don’t try to do everything at once, or you’ll get overwhelmed, and spend a lot of money very quickly.
Have Fun
Most importantly, remember to have some fun with your new home. A bigger house can be a dream come true, and daydreaming about doesn’t have to stop once you’ve moved in. Take some time to imagine and picture how you want to use your extra space, how you want to decorate it, and how you want to live in your new home. Turning your new home into a dream home means taking the time to work out exactly what you want. Give yourself time to daydream and experiment and you can get each room perfect when you’re ready to decorate and furnish it.
A bigger house can be overwhelming to move into, but if you give yourself time to think, plan, and design – this will help you spread the costs out and get everything exactly how you want it.
