Unpacking after moving house in Guildford

Make a bed before you make a dent in the boxes

After a move into Guildford, the temptation is to open the box marked kitchen because you are hungry and curious. Make the beds first. A house in Onslow Village or a flat in the centre is equally grim if nobody can sleep.

Then do a small kitchen: kettle, mugs, one pan, plates, washing-up liquid. Leave the rest of the china until you know which cupboard it belongs in. Newer houses and older terraces do not share a layout, so unpacking “where it was in the last house” wastes an evening.

Paperwork while you can still find it

Keep the folder that never went on the van on the table. That is the place for meter readings, the new address confirmation and the numbers you need for Guildford Borough Council or Waverley, depending on which side of the boundary you have moved to. Godalming and Cranleigh are Waverley. Most of Guildford town is the borough council.

Tell the GP and set the post redirect if you did not do it before completion. Those jobs are harder once the paperwork box has been “tidied” into a spare room.

What can wait

Books, pictures, out-of-season clothes and the loft boxes can wait. If a box has no label, do not open it in the hall and spread it. Take it to the room it might belong to, or leave it closed.

If the packing service packed for you, the labels should already name the room. Unpack in that order. Do not rebuild flat-pack furniture in a doorway that the rest of the boxes still need.

The first weekend

Walk the house once for what is missing: curtains that do not fit a bay, a sofa that blocks a socket, a lamp you meant to leave behind. Guildford stairs are often the reason a piece is in the wrong room. Move it once, in daylight, rather than living with it in the hall.

Then stop. A finished Tuesday is a better result than a perfect spare room.