You’re standing in the middle of your new apartment, drowning in cardboard boxes and paint fumes. It’s unfamiliar territory-no couch to flop on, no television to flip on. Is this place ever going to feel like home?
Moving is stressful. You literally uproot yourself, your life and, most importantly, your stuff. The transition into a new apartment is more than physical and fiscal-it’s psychologically draining, too. That’s why the first thing you unpack is so important. It’s an instant reflection of what “home” means to you.
Urban Gateways artist Thea Marshall immediately reaches for her cassettes. “When I feel the need to get upbeat, music is what does it,” she explains. “Familiar tunes in an unfamiliar place provide continuity. I feel like, `OK, now we’re home.’ Then I can get on with everything else.”
Her husband, a biologist with a soft heart for strays, “would unpack whatever animal he is taking care of at the time, and their dishes and toys to make sure they are feeling at home and comfortable,” she laughs. (Previous tenants have included a crippled possum and six huge snakes.)
C.J. Appleson Smith is more down to earth. The first thing she unpacks is her clothes. “You just cannot do anything unless your closets are organized,” she stresses.
Lights, camera . . .
Her husband, Jay, an obsessed Jimmy Stewart fan who has collected close to 70 of his movies on videotape, “would probably unpack his damn tapes first,” says Appleson Smith with a laugh. “Then he’d sit there and watch them and let me do everything else.” What’s the first thing Jay would buy for his new place? “Probably another videotape,” she says, “just to sort of bless the new apartment.”
Carolyn Katz has had similar experiences with her husband. “He’d unpack the stereo, then put the music on and think he was done, while I was unpacking everything else,” she laments. “I guess it’s a guy thing.”
Indeed it is, says Michael Weiss, president of Midway Moving and Storage Inc. “Men are most concerned with their electronics, their toys. It’s not a stereotype-it’s true. Before the move is even completed, they’ve got the TV unwrapped, set up on a box, their feet propped up on another box. It makes ’em feel like they’re back to business in their own new residence.”
“Not only do they want to unpack the TV and stereo first, but they don’t want any help doing it,” says Thalia Poulos, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers.
Stockbroker Ali Khan is the polar opposite. He can’t go 10 minutes without unpacking his toiletries, and lining them up in the bathroom. “I’m kind of neat about stuff, to the point of being weird. I have to make sure my shaving cream and the blades are all there.” He pauses. “I used to have disagreements about that with my ex-wife. She was kind of messy.”
Women, Weiss says, are usually the neat freaks. “They’re obsessive about getting their kitchens unpacked. They want every glass in the right compartment before they go to sleep. That’s their idea of having their home in order.”
Poulos explains the logic behind it: “The kitchen usually takes up more boxes than any other room. Unpacking the kitchen lets you get rid of a lot of boxes right away.”
Kids have their own priorities, too, Weiss stresses. “They want to get their stuff-dolls, stuffed animals-settled in. Usually parents, before they start unpacking their things, will help the children settle in, unpack a toy or two to keep them busy.”
“Adults aren’t the only ones who need to feel some semblance of familiarity,” emphasizes Monica Thompson, president of Chaos to Order, an organizing service that helps people settle into their new homes. “After a family moves, it takes weeks and weeks to feel like you have an even vaguely normal routine. The first thing anyone unpacks is really crucial, because it sets the whole tone for your new place.”
A dial tone is Frank Pons’ first priority: “A phone. You can’t live without it. What if you want to order a pizza?”
Nancy Wasserman, a retail manager, has more practical reasons for unpacking the phone first. “You need it to coordinate the whole move-the packers, the delivery people. Plus, my parents want to hear that I’ve arrived safely. You just can’t function without a phone and answering machine.”
Wasserman has a list of other first-night necessities: mattress, shower curtain and iron. “You can go out and buy toilet paper in the middle of the night, but you can’t buy a mattress. The last time we moved, we didn’t have a shower curtain, so the bathroom was a mess. We didn’t have an iron either, so my husband had to go to his new job wrinkled.”
Practicality aside, a Persian rug is the first thing Nihar Sait, a student at Northwestern University, drags out of his truck when he moves into a new flat every fall. “I like to feel something on the ground,” he says. “And the rug gives a room life and color. The next thing I unpack is my favorite poster, to remind me of home. I spend a lot of time looking for just the right place to hang it, because I know that will always be my favorite part of the room, the one I want people to look at.”
The first thing Sait bought for his apartment this year was a couch. “Last year I didn’t buy any furniture, because I was cheap,” he laughs. “But I never feel at home until I have something to sink down into. The couch is a point of reference, of perspective, where you can sit back and think about what else you have to do.”
When Erika Freihage, a first-year graduate student in education at Harvard University, moved to Cambridge last fall, the first things she whipped out were her books. “I just felt like every Harvard student should have a fabulous bookshelf,” she laughs, “so I went out and bought `War And Peace’ and other big, important books to add to it. I haven’t read them yet, but I will.”
Freihage is not alone, says Thompson of Chaos to Order. “I once moved a professor who cared only about his collection of books. He had thousands of them. But not only did he want them moved, he wanted them unpacked and put back on the shelves in the exact same order!”
Some sentimental folks “like to get their framed family photos up on the wall, so they can look around and feel those people nearby,” Thompson adds. “And around the holidays, the first thing people like to unpack is their Christmas lights and decorations. It makes them feel festive.”
“What we unpack first is what we trust,” concludes psychiatrist Jack Hanni. “Basically, it boils down to this: Everyone is a Linus, and all we want is our blanket.”
