You’re excited about your upcoming wedding, but you’ll need to deal with one serious practical matter: moving in together and setting up your new home. Before you walk down the aisle, you and your future spouse must collaborate on both major and minor homesteading details. From physical possessions to décor preferences, forging a new household together takes communication, organization, and planning.
Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff
If you’ve both lived on your own for some time, you’ve already accumulated lots of possessions. Between you and your mate, the sheer amount of stuff you have can seem mindboggling. You may each have complete collections of kitchenware, furniture, artwork, appliances, electronics, tools, and more. Unless you’re moving into a large home with generous floor space, you must figure out what to keep and what to toss. Fortunately, Houzz contributor Laura Gaskill provides some useful suggestions to help avoid clutter and duplication:
- Take measurements and plenty of photos of your new dwelling.
- Choose what you both love and need from each other’s current collections.
- Remove duplicate items.
- Do not criticize family heirlooms.
- Handle differing opinions with empathy.
- Work together to sort out closet space and contents.
- Keep and rotate out decorative items.
- Select and combine your wall art collections.
A certain degree of logic is needed, but you should not ignore the emotions that are tied to belongings. Your partner may bring an antique desk that isn’t quite to your tastes, but you can pick other details to incorporate it into a room’s overall look. As for duplicate items, err toward selecting the highest quality versions. You both could have complete cookware sets, but it’s better to keep yours if it’s newer, made from higher-grade materials, or works better with your stove’s cooktop.
Putting the Pieces Together
Crafting your new home requires more than just sorting out who’s bringing what. Your shared spaces should spark joy and reflect your unique personalities. To start forging a cohesive interior style, each partner should select three or four pieces of furniture or art. Writing for Apartment Therapy, Jennifer Hunter points out that you can alternate the focal pieces that you use from your collections. Don’t overlook the importance of veto power, however. After all, you both should enjoy your newly crafted home.
If you’re buying a house or condo or your rental management permits you to change the walls, you’re in luck. Try painting them in neutral shades to allow more leeway to mix and match furniture, wall art, and other décor. Furniture pieces can be reused by painting, reupholstering, or repurposing in unique and creative ways. For instance, author Gail Wilson mentions several methods for converting old dressers into storage benches, media centers, hall tables, sideboards, and more.
Since you and your partner have different styles and collections of items, it’s a great opportunity to craft spaces with contrasting pieces. Freshome’s Tara Mastroeni talks about how interior designers accomplish this feat. Also, seeing your combined collection may supply inspiration for later shopping excursions. New pieces you both discover can “fill in the blanks” for what you’re missing or tie together disparate elements.
Of course, making your new home isn’t just about what you bring. You also need to figure out where to put it. Room diagrams will help you find optimal places for your furniture and belongings. Meanwhile, couples should keep an open mind in deciding how to arrange each room.
Creativity, Openness, and Compromise
Whether you are moving in together before the wedding or after the honeymoon, a collaborative spirit is essential for building your new home. Minimize heated disagreements and hurt feelings with communication, negotiation, and understanding. Your approach should also be flexible and practical for unified spaces that you both enjoy.
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