The First Week in a New Apartment

Moving advice stops at the door. The first week is where a new apartment becomes somewhere you live, and a short list done early saves a great deal of low-grade annoyance later.

Just-In-Time Moving handles apartment moves across West Valley City and Salt Lake County.

Day one

Photograph everything, before you unpack. Every room, floors, walls, doorframes, appliances, and any existing mark. This is the deposit argument and it can only be made now. Keep the photographs somewhere that survives a new phone.

Find the essentials. The electrical panel, the water shut-off, the smoke alarms, and how the heating and cooling actually work. Test the alarms.

Beds and one bathroom. Then stop.

The first few days

Confirm the utilities are in your name and that nothing is still running on the previous tenant's account or a builder's temporary supply.

Find the mailbox and work out which one is yours, which in cluster arrangements is not obvious. Set up mail forwarding if you have not.

Learn the parking rules. Where guests park, whether there are permits, and what gets towed. This is the single most common source of first-month unpleasantness in a complex.

Find out the bin day and where the bins are.

Check the locks. Ask whether they were changed between tenants. Many complexes do this as standard; it is worth confirming rather than assuming.

The first week

Unpack room by room, finishing each before starting the next, rather than a bit of everywhere. A finished room is somewhere to be while the rest is chaos.

Break boxes down flat as you empty them and get them out. In an apartment there is nowhere for them to go, and they take over quickly.

Introduce yourself to whoever is directly above, below or next door. It costs nothing and it makes every subsequent noise conversation easier.

Update your address on your renters insurance and your driving licence, and work through the rest of the address list before it starts arriving at your old flat: bank, employer, doctor, and anywhere that sends anything you would not want a stranger opening.

Learn the building's quiet rules

Every complex has a set of conventions that are not in the lease and that new residents discover by breaking. When laundry rooms get busy. Whether the corridor is somewhere things can be left. What time the floor above stops being tolerant of a drill.

Ask the office, or ask a neighbour, rather than finding out through a complaint.

And the boxes still sealed in three months

Look at them then rather than moving them again next year. Anything you have not needed in three months is telling you something.

Call (435) 862-3080 or email office@movingjustintime.com.