The long awaited day has come where you are sitting with the seller at the closing table, signing your huge stack of mortgage paperwork, and receiving your key for your new to you home.

Now what?

Many of us will run out and move right into the home but there are things you should consider doing before you move into your new home.

1. Change out all the exterior locks in the house. You asking why? Are you sure the seller gave you ALL the keys at closing? There could be the chance that, when they have kids that one of the kids might still has a house key or that the previous owner gave a key to their contractor they forgot about.

2. Call the utility companies and set up the utilities for your new home into your name. You want to make sure you have turned on the utilities in your name. I am sure the seller is going to call the utilities companies to take the utilities out of their name and you don’t want to sit in your new home and all of the sudden don’t have any lights, heat or cooling.

3. When you have pets introduce them to the house and yard early. It will make the transition to the new place much easier on them when they had the chance to get to know the new house and yard early. Consider with dogs to take one of their blankets or baskets and move them into the house, so that they have their spot they can relax and it smells familiar.

4. Change your address with the US postal service. While you are in transition between addresses change the address early with everybody else as well to ensure that all important bills and information will reach you at your new address. During the transition you then can quickly see if you might forgotten someone. This way you can ensure your mail does not get stuck at the old address and you never will see it again and you wonder why you don’t hear from individuals.

5. Make needed repairs and paint. When the home is empty is the perfect time to do the maintenance things you personally would like to do before you move in and paint the interior. It will make it a much quicker process when you don’t have to work around your furniture.

6. Change or repair flooring. Another great thing to do when the house is empty is to either change or repair the flooring. The job will be much quicker and it will cost you more when you have it hired out to put new flooring or have flooring repaired in the house the flooring layers will have to move your furniture to put the new flooring down.

7. Have the flooring cleaned. Before you move in it is a great time to have your flooring cleaned. As with putting in the flooring, it will cost you more when the flooring cleaners have to move furnishing to clean the flooring.

8. Clean everything inside and out. Before moving in your furnishings it is a great time to clean the entire house. It is so much easier to clean everything while it is empty compare to clean when you have to move things around and it will make it a much faster process.

9. Make a move-in plan. As silly as it sounds, measure the house and make a detailed floor plan and with the plan on hand lay out each room before you move the furniture in. This will make sure that you know right from the beginning if the furniture fit the way you have planned and the move will be much quicker because everybody knows where things are going.

10. Set your garage up for success. The garage is for the vehicles and many homeowners use the garage for storage and par the vehicle outside. Measure the new garage with the vehicles parked inside so you can see how much room you have to work with and make a separate floor plan for the garage. Make sure that everything you think that needs to go into the garage has its place and when it does not fit there might be different storage options you can utilize, like the garage ceiling, or cabinets.

With everything we normally do it will go so much faster when we make a plan, put the plan in place and work the plan. Will it be 100% fool proof….NO….just go with the flow….