What do you do when you get married as an adult and you both have dishes, towels, bedding, pots and pans? You “purge and you merge.” Recently, I’ve had the exciting opportunity to work with a client who was marrying another client of mine. We had to go through the closet to make space for a second wardrobe before the big day. How fun for me to work separately with each client in their own home only to work with them again in one home!
Coming together under one roof can be both exciting and a bit stressful. Here are 6 organizing tips to merge two households into one to make the transition easier!
Organizing Tip #1 Decide where you will live.
Are one of you moving into an existing residence or are you both moving into a new location altogether?
Organizing Tip #2 Create a schedule.
Map out a schedule of what needs to be done prior to your merge. Do you need to empty a home for a sale? Do you need to give notice to a landlord? Do you need to purchase moving boxes? Do you need to hire a a property management company to rent one home?
Making a schedule with due dates will break a big project down into little projects.
Organizing Tip #3 Purge according to your space allowance.
Are you moving to a bigger home or a smaller home? Do you have a lot of storage or little, bitty closets? This is going to have a major impact on what you keep and what you let go. Ideally, you will make everything fit into your existing space. Worse case scenario, you will have to rent space in a storage facility. If this is the case, you will have to plan out what will live in the home with you and what will be living in storage, clearly labeled of course.
Organizing Tip #4 Purge alone.
You can do some of this on your own before doing it together. I’m sure you can go through your home, room by room and part with the obvious things that you no longer need, use or love. If you can both do that on your own, you will have made a big dent before the next step.
Organizing Tip #5 Purge together.
Now that you’ve both let go on your own, it’s time to come together and take a cold hard look at duplicates. Keep this motto in mind, “Keep the best and part with the rest.” You are both going to have towels, so go through the towels and get it down to the 10 best or whatever number works for you. You will both have dishes, now is the time to pick the dishes you can both live with. You will both have bed sheets, now is the time to pick the sets that will fit your bed and are in the best condition. Be careful of each person’s feelings during this process.
Organizing Tip #6 Merge!
Yeah, it’s time to bring it altogether and create your home, congratulations! As you begin putting things away you may find you still have too much. At this point, you must decide to either let some more stuff go or increase your storage space. Really look hard for usable storage, on doors, on hooks, adding extra shelves, overhead storage and under the bed.
Congratulations and best wishes as you enjoy living together under one roof!
