How long after moving did you feel settled in?

[Isa]

How long after a move did it take for you to feel settled in (at least as much as your previous home)?

We moved less than a year ago, and there a number of things that I'm still taking out of boxes. I'm still figuring out where the final placement of things will be.

[Tammy in Germany]

For me...I work like a crazy women for 1 week and get everything unpacked and put away. After that week...I start to feel pretty settled in.

Getting ready for another move this month and I'll say this move will be the most difficult. We are moving from 3000 sq feet into an 1080 sq ft apartment. (I'm a little ticked at the military right now) So most of our stuff will have to be stored. The sorting is what's killing me. :001_huh: How do I know what I might need for the next 2 years.:confused:

[KristineIN]

For me...I work like a crazy women for 1 week and get everything unpacked and put away. After that week...I start to feel pretty settled in.



When we moved last summer, I did the same thing. All of my boxes have been unpacked and gone through. I have friends that moved several years ago and still have packed boxes. Now granted we were going from 900 square ft. to 1900 square ft. So we didn't have a lot of stuff, but it was enough!

Kristine

[mrscopterdoc]

How long after a move did it take for you to feel settled in (at least as much as your previous home)?


Exactly what do you mean by 'settled in'? If you mean all boxes unpacked and everything in its place...it could be one week or 6 months.:tongue_smilie: If you mean, it feels like 'home', that varies. Our last house I loved right away. This current house we've been in 2 years now and it still feels weird.

[Jennifer in MI]

I agree, it depends on what you mean by settled in. We moved last fall and I was unpacked within a couple days. It took another couple weeks of moving things around to make sure they were in the right places though.

Now, if I were moving to a new town, it takes a couple years to find my niche. (Our last move was just a mile away from our old house!)

[Plaid Dad]

We can unpack in a day or two, but it takes us 6 months or so to feel truly settled and to find a place for every last thing. (That usually involves realizing that certain things don't have or need a place in our new home.)

[abbeyej]

Completely unpacked? 6 months.

Truly "settled"? Three years. Well, three years for a cross-country, you-can't-drive-to-the-old-house-in-less-than-a-day moves. The last time we moved "down the street" from our old home, the adjustment was almost instantaneous, 'cause the new place was so much better than the old one.

[lynn]

How long after a move did it take for you to feel settled in (at least as much as your previous home)?

We moved less than a year ago, and there a number of things that I'm still taking out of boxes. I'm still figuring out where the final placement of things will be.

We have it down to 1 weekend. We usually have delivery on Thursday. Then friday, Saturday and Sunday everything is out of boxes and where it needs to be and I call the shipping company Mon morning boxes gone by Wednesday. We've moved a few times and it is now and art. I start organizing my house about 1 month before move and go room to room discarding anything and everything we have not needed, seen, worn in over a year and put everything in the right room/drawer so it gets packed accordingly so when we get to our new home there is no suprise opening a box with things I really don't want/need and it's pretty much in the right room. I unwrap all my decor lay it out grab some nails, hammer and level and get things hung up in an afternoon a couple weeks after living in our new house.

If you really can't place something you probably don't need it and it's time to sell or donate or it can become clutter fast.

[Mrs Mungo]

It takes us a few weeks to unpack. However, I don't feel *settled* for at least 6 months. It takes time to make friends, find your support circles, etc.

[CookieMonster]

it was two solid years after moving before I felt 'settled in'.

I'm uptight like that. I also was going through pregnancy, nursing, and potty training during those two years.

[KidsHappen]

We have been here 8 months now and feel like we have always been here. This house feels more like home than any place I have ever lived. It feels like it was meant to be. It took about three months to unpack and settle in. :)

[rockermom]

We moved to the town where I grew up about 8 months ago. I don't feel settled. I have no friends here and neither does dh. I have lots of family, though. I wonder if I'll ever feel settled.. Maybe my uneasiness is because we're trying to get the financing to buy the house we're renting and it needs work. I don't feel like I'm "home".

[Sandra314]

It took us 3-4 months to unpack everything and put it in its place. To feel truly "settled in" took us 2 years.

[freethinkermom]

This will sound kind of extreme, but we have been here 6 years next month and I can just now finally say I feel settled in. It in no way can be compared to where we previously lived. We hated our house in Los Angeles. It was a duplex and an all-around terrible experience living there. Combine that with the fact that we lived very close to my family (mom, grandma, stepdad, sister) and could not quite extract ourselves from their self-inflicted unhappiness.

So when we moved here it was about so much change...new state, a practically newborn baby, getting away far enough away from toxic family that we could stay in touch but not be poisoned, dealing with my mom's cancer diagnosis (given a month before we left and she was given 6 months max to live, she tried to use it to manipulate us into not moving which was no longer an option at that point. She survived and is healthy now six years later, btw), and I broke my foot two weeks before the move.

We tried to settled in early, but there was too much turmoil. I dumbly, given our history, agreed to let my grandmother stay here for a month during our first summer so my mom could focus on her cancer treatment. That was a huge mistake which opened up a lot of emotions from years of childhood trauma (my grandmother was my main caregiver as a child). Then the company dh worked for was sold to a giant fortune 500 company that fall, which eventually turned out very well for us, but was stressful at first. So that first year was a whirlwind.

It has taken me until recently to come to terms with living so far from a real city and, also, to let go of all the emotional and mental baggage piled on by my family in CA (ok, so it is not all gone, but I feel the weight being lifted). It was not until it really sunk in that I am not limited by them anymore that I could settle in here.

Honestly, I think the is the first time EVER in my life that I feel settled in to my own home.

[Christine]

How long after a move did it take for you to feel settled in (at least as much as your previous home)?

We moved less than a year ago, and there a number of things that I'm still taking out of boxes. I'm still figuring out where the final placement of things will be.

2-3 years! And we are military! Do you know how often we move??? (generally every 2-3 years!)

We've been 2 places for 4 years each, and we "recently" (2.5 years ago) just moved into one of those areas. (But we live 30-40 miles from where we had lived previously, and a lot of things have changed in 13 years!)

I'm just now starting to feel "settled".

I have noticed one thing, for my feeling "settled" doesn't occur till I know ~ 2 routes to any place I want to go; all the boxes are unpacked; and I'm more familiar with my neighbors than a passing "hello"; oh, and also when I know "for sure" the home for all the furniture. (You know when the chair that would "look perfect in that corner" has been discovered to have no function other than looks. . . gotta find it's home.)

[abbeyej]

As a couple of others have admitted to being "slow to feel settled", I realized one of the signs I had recently that I really *am* "settled" now after 4 years. (And I'll stick with what I said that it took 3 years for me to feel this comfortable, to feel like home, but this particular incident was recent.) I had flu a couple of months ago. Dh was on the other side of the country, and I could barely move off the couch. I had no medicine and no energy to go to the store, I wasn't able to take care of the kids, and though mine are old enough that they could make sandwiches for themselves and generally be self-reliant for a couple of days, it really distressed my daughter that there was no one "taking care of" her (not to mention seeing Mommy like that). I finally emailed a friend that I was really sick and needed someone to take the kids the next day -- could she do it, or find someone who could? ... It was the fact that I had this whole network of people, and I knew that *if* my friend couldn't take the kids for me the next day, we had a number of friends in common, any of which would be willing to help me if they could and who I would trust to care for my kids. That friend ended up bringing me medicine and juice, taking the kids, and bringing them back (well-fed for the first time in days, poor things) along with homemade soup. The next day another friend she had contacted took the kids again...

I just felt so cared for, and so much part of a real network of people. It seems to take me about three years to come to that point -- where acquaintances have become friends, where I can find my way around town (at least the parts I really need), where I run into people I know around town, where I recognize place names and streets and restaurants and can offer reasonable commentary if someone asks me about something, where I'm volunteering for some job or other for the 2nd or 3rd year in a row and really feel like I know what I'm doing...

It's really not so much about the house for me. The house can be quick. But even surrounded by my "stuff", it can take a while to feel settled. And that's not the same as "unhappy" -- it can be, but it's also possible to feel entirely content with the location and still not "settled". That, for me, just takes some time.

[KristineIN]

We have been here 8 months now and feel like we have always been here. This house feels more like home than any place I have ever lived. It feels like it was meant to be. It took about three months to unpack and settle in. :)


We instantly felt like we've always been here, it's been nice. I guess that's what happens when you go from one bathroom to 2 1/2 and double the space. I don't miss anything about our former house, a few neighbors, but that's all.

Kristine