Tips For Moving In With Your Partner

Finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with is exciting. Moving in with them is exciting too, but can also be an unanticipated challenge. Even if you have known someone for many years, living with them in close quarters will undoubtedly reveal to you more than you would expect about their character and personal routines. It can be useful to have an idea of what to expect when planning to move in with your partner for the first time, so here are some tips to get you prepared.

Choose Your Ideal Location

When you move home as a single person, you are far less restricted in your choice of location. You can base your decision on how close to your job you would like to live or where the nearest of your favorite restaurants might be. When finding somewhere to live with a partner, however, you both need to take into consideration each other’s needs. Do you and your partner work in different parts of the city? Look for properties that suit you both without negatively impacting either of your preferences too much.

Merge Your Belongings

Two people moving in together means two sets of personal belongings combining in one shared living space. Some people are very free and easy with their possessions, willing to share everything. Some are more territorial and require their own dedicated spaces for their personal possessions to be stored. If you both have quite a few items and your new home runs the risk of feeling overwhelmingly cluttered, consider finding public storage facilities to keep your possessions secure while you decide where to put them. Over time, it’s likely that you and your partner will start to view items as belonging to both of you rather than one of you individually, but until then set up clear expectations in advance to prevent unnecessary disputes.

Be Patient

It takes time to grow accustomed to another person living right under your feet. Don’t see any teething problems as a sign of future disaster. Give yourself a few weeks or months to get used to living in each other’s space.

Divide Chores Fairly

Depending on where you lived before moving in with your partner, you might be accustomed to someone else doing all of the housework or having to do it all by yourself. Either way, now that you will be sharing a space with your partner, you will both be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of your new home. Of course, each of you will have your own skills and preferences, so playing to these as much as possible is a good way to begin dividing chores. For example, if you despise vacuuming and doing the laundry but love to cook, consider making delicious meals for your partner and cleaning the dishes afterwards. Sooner or later a natural routine of housework will emerge from your habits. Just make sure neither of you takes the other for granted and fails to appreciate the effort you  each put into the house.