Moving in with your long-term partner or fiancé into your first home together is an exciting step in your relationship. This new phase will be filled with growth, deeper connection, and new memories, but that does not mean this step does not come without its worries or challenges. From deciding where to live to furnishing your new home to successfully living together, we have created a guide of tips to assist you to take this exciting step together confidently. Find the perfect couch for your new home together with cheap corner couches for sale at 5Star Furniture.
Deciding Where to Live Together:
The first step to moving in with your partner is deciding where you will be living together. If you both already live in your own apartments, you will need to choose whether you will move into your partner’s apartment (or vice versa) or find an entirely new apartment together. Deciding where to live together can come with its challenges, but we have highlighted 3 important tips for selecting your first home/apartment together to make this process easier.
1) Proximity to Work, Family, Friends, or Activities:
Location is the first factor to consider when finding your first home together. Firstly, the areas you consider for your home together should always be safe and well-kept areas to avoid any unnecessary risks. If your apartment or your partner’s apartment has been subject to security risks, then you should consider removing that apartment and area from your list of options.
You then need to consider the proximity of the apartment or home to both of your workplaces. Choosing an apartment that forces one of you to spend hours in traffic to get to and from work will result in unnecessary stress on the relationship. If your workplaces are located far apart, you will need to find an area that provides an equal compromise for travelling distance.
Other factors to consider when selecting an area for your home are proximity to family, friends, or activities. If being closely located to friends or family is important to either you or your partner, you should incorporate this factor into your home search. Alternatively, if you both love going to the beach or spending your weekends’ hiking, you should choose a home that is located nearby your favourite activities to make it easy to spend quality time together.
2) Budget-friendly Rental:
When choosing where to live together for the first time, your best choice is to find a rental apartment or home first. A rental apartment or home allows you to live together without the extra pressure of purchasing a home together. By renting for a year or two, you can ensure that living together works before you make any major financial commitments.
When selecting between rentals for your first home together, you both need to be open about your finances. Your rental amount should be budget-friendly and realistic for both of you. This will protect your relationship from any unnecessary arguments or distress about finances when you are living together.
3) A Place that Inspires Happiness:
Once you have narrowed your options down to a few budget-friendly rentals that are ideally located to your work, family, friends, or favourite activities, you then need to choose a home that will make you both happy. Many people look for different aspects in their home that will make them feel happy and comfortable in the space, such as large windows to allow in natural lighting, high-tech appliances that increase household efficiency, or a big garden for outdoor living. You should both voice your home preferences and choose a space that matches both your needs to ensure that you will both be happy in your new home.
Furnishing and Decorating Your New Home:
The next step in living together is furnishing and decorating your new home to transform it into a comfortable, functional, and personalised space. Unfortunately, furnishing and decorating can often spark some disagreements amongst couples moving in together for the first time. Follow our 4 tips for furnishing and decorating your home together to create a practical and beautiful space that reflects both your styles and needs.
1) Strike a Balance of Yours and Theirs:
If you both lived in your own apartments, you would have each accumulated a plethora of furniture pieces, soft furnishings, kitchen utensils, and décor. Living together does not mean getting rid of every piece of furniture or décor that you own, but it is about striking a balance between what you own and what they own to create a shared space. We have included 3 tips for balancing what you own and what your partner owns in your new home.
Be Practical: Choosing between your furniture pieces can be as simple as deciding which is the more practical choice for your apartment and joint needs. If the bed your partner owns is bigger, that will allow you both to sleep better in your new apartment. If your dining table does not fit in your dining room, then a smaller one or a new dining table will be a better choice. When practicality is your guide, it can help prevent any unnecessary disagreements over who’s stuff is kept or discarded.
Be Considerate of Sentimental Pieces: Your partner may own a vintage dressing table handed down to her by her grandmother that is deeply disconnected from your modern taste or your fiancé may be holding onto an artwork they created in high school that you simply dislike. Before you go through their things and start placing them on the sell/donate pile, ask them if there are any sentimental pieces they would struggle to let go of before making any hurtful remarks.
Stick to the Design Plan: Choosing between décor is where it can be tricky unless you both decide to stick to a design plan. Spend some time together and look through online resources to discover the design theme that you both love. Whether it is a Scandinavian design, Mid-century Modern design, or Farmhouse design, you can then use this design theme to determine which décor pieces are kept and which are either donated or sold.
2) Incorporate a Few New Furniture Pieces:
One easy way to make your new home together feel like a shared space is to purchase a few new furniture pieces together. Whether this is a comfortable couch, an extra cupboard to store your clothes, or side tables for your bedroom, you can choose a few new pieces together that will make your shared space feel like home for both of you. Shopping for your furniture pieces together can be a fun bonding experience as you can learn about each of your tastes. Focus on selecting furniture pieces that will make your home functional for your needs and personalised to your shared lifestyle.
3) Compromise:
Compromising is essential in all aspects of relationships, and furnishing and decorating your new home together is no different. If you have wildly different design tastes or disagree on the perfect placement of the couch, the best way to achieve peace and equality is to find ways to compromise. Rather than allowing furnishing and decorating your apartment to be a stressful and argumentative experience, you can both compromise equally to create a space that reflects your individual and shared tastes.
Living Together in Your New Home:
Once you have positioned your couch in the lounge, hung up your artworks, and allocated the cupboard space, your lives will begin to settle down and you will need to start learning how to live with each other. We have 3 tips for successfully living together in your first home.
Create a Plan for Sharing Expenses: Finances can often be the Achilles heel when a couple starts living together. When you move in together and have a firm grasp on what expenses you both generate, have an open conversation about each of your finances and what you can both afford to contribute to shared expenses. Sharing expenses will keep your living arrangements fair and avoid any unnecessary problems in your relationship.
Equally Share Household Chores: With living comes dirty dishes, laundry, dusty countertops, and messy floors. To keep living together fair and considerate, you should equally share household chores. Whether this means that you take turns to do the dishes or allocate specific chores to each other, you should ensure that the chores are equally shared and considerate of your schedules.
Make Time For Yourself: When couples move in together for the first time, they often fall into the trap of doing everything together. While it is important to spend quality time together apart from simple day-to-day living, you also need to prioritise your independence and personal space. Whether it is a girl’s night out, a golf day, or having a long bath whilst listening to your favourite music, you need to ensure that you both are making time for yourselves to keep your relationship healthy.
Furnish Your Home with 5Star Furniture Cheap Corner Couches for Sale:
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As the lounge will be your space where you catch up with your partner after your day at work or spend rainy Sundays watching movie marathons, the couch you have needs to be comfortable. 5Star Furniture cheap corner couches for sale are all high-quality and comfortable to ensure you can spend many happy hours on your couch. Make lasting memories in your first apartment with any of the 5Star Furniture cheap corner couches for sale.
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