Making Moves

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you know that the manfriend and I made the plunge and moved in together last week! (P.S. The manfriend is the one who usually takes my blog photos because he’s actually the best.) I wore this flirty floral dress to the Bitches Who Brunch Summer Soirée, but also wore it to our celebration dinner on the day I moved in to the manfriend’s place.

I feel like I’m at a point in my life where a lot of my friends are getting serious about their relationships and are also making the decision to move in with their significant others, so I thought it might be helpful to share some of my tips for making the big change.

Some background on the move – we’d been planning it for about 7 months, so I should have had a lot of time to prepare, but per usual I waited until the month before to actually start getting ready. I ended up moving into my boyfriend’s place after his roommate moved out, so there was a LOT of prep work to turn the former frat house into an inhabitable residence. (Love you babe!)

• This is an obvious one – but patience and willingness to compromise are the most important factors when moving in together. For example – the “Captain’s Chair”, an overstuffed leather chair that was pretty much meant for watching sports, and also my boyfriend’s prized possession. The chair is  old and didn’t match my other furniture, but it was important to him to have a comfy, manly chair, so the Captain’s Chair got to stay, but I was allowed to put a faux fur pillow on it.

• My boyfriend had been living in our place for the past four years, so there were a ton of things that former roommates had left behind or pieces from when he first graduated college (9 years ago) that were outdated and just needed to go. My boyfriend is pretty sentimental, so when we first started working on cleaning out the apartment he was not too happy with me when I suggested we throw out approximately half of his items. We did end up selling a lot of things on Craigslist, but since they were his things, we spent the money on really good seats to a Nationals game because he loves baseball (compromise, people!)

• This last point brings me to Craigslist – which is an excellent tool that I highly recommend you use if you’re looking to get rid of a lot of items. If you’re selling furniture, make sure you measure everything and post the dimensions on the ad. We didn’t originally do this and got a LOT more interest in our pieces once we updated the posts to include the measurements. Also, make sure you’re both there if you’re having someone over to look at something. While we didn’t have any sketchy interactions with our sales, it’s a weird world out there.

• Painting is HARD, but the good people at ACE Hardware will help teach you everything you need to know. We were insanely ambitious and decided to repaint the apartment since it hadn’t been painted in six years, and man that project was a major undertaking. Pro tip – drop cloths are your best friend. I’m still peeling dried paint off of our hardwood floors.

• Do a major closet clean out right before you move. I’m horrible about getting rid of clothes, but it definitely helped to have less clothing to move slash merge into a smaller closet space. I sold my nicer items to ThredUp and donated the older pieces to Goodwill. There’s also a lot of clothing donation bins around the District if you don’t have a car to make the trip up the Goodwill donation center.

• Lastly, we’d suggest setting a date for a Housewarming party! Originally, we decided to throw a housewarming party so we had a deadline to get the place in order, but now it’s turned into something to look forward to and we can’t wait for our friends to see all the hard work we’ve put into this place! Seriously – it’s been transformed.

I could offer up a lot more about this topic, but this post is long enough. Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have if you’re thinking about moving in with your SO!

Dress | Forever 21

Shoes | Amazon

Bag | Rebecca Minkoff