Moving is stressful. According to Psychology Today magazine, it’s one of the most-stressful events you can experience in life, preceded only by divorce and death of a loved one.
It’s easy to forget even the most basic tasks amid the packing, supervising movers and wrangling kids and pets before and during the move — and then unpacking, organizing and learning the lay of the land of your new home and neighborhood after.
“Moving really messes with your head,” says Rachel Stringer, a real estate agent with Raleigh Realty in Cary, North Carolina. “You’re trying to stay on top of so many things at once, and suddenly basic stuff slips through the cracks.”
Stringer says that buyers often focus on visible things like furniture placement or organizing closets, but that it’s the less obvious tasks that matter just as much — if not more.
[Related:Things You Can Do Instead of Moving]
Here are eight commonly forgotten tasks that all homebuyers should do when moving into a new home.
Deep clean. This may sound obvious, but many times new owners are in a rush to move into their new home and fail to clean properly. Thoroughly cleaning the home — or hiring a professional company to perform a move-in deep cleaning service — means that you start off with everything clean and fresh, plus it’s much easier to clean before all your stuff is in the house.
Be sure to check cabinets and other hiding places where items could have been left behind. You may be surprised by the strange or outright dangerous items you may find. Elise Brown, a public relations consultant in Tucson, Arizona, found a box of bullets in a closet when she recently moved into her new home.
Change the toilet seats. This is a hygiene issue that is frequently forgotten. To avoid lingering germs from the prior owners, run to Home Depot or Lowe’s and pick up some new seats. They are easy to install yourself.
Change the locks. You were probably handed a set of keys at the closing table, but it would be a mistake to believe these are the only ones. A housekeeper or dog walker may have a key, or the former owners may have retained one in error. Since you have no idea how many people hold keys to your new home, it’s an easy and inexpensive fix to hire a locksmith to either change the locks or just rekey the existing ones.
[READ: 20 Packing and Moving Tips and Tricks to Simplify Your Move]
Change the filters — all of them. When Brown moved into her one-story townhouse in Tucson, she could have focused on the fantastic views of the Santa Catalina Mountains from her backyard and ignored cleaning her filters. Luckily, she didn’t. “I did not expect to find just how filthy the filters were,” she says.
She first checked the air filter, and when she saw that it hadn’t been changed in a while, she thought she better check the other filters in the house as well. The dryer filter was so badly caked with lint that she needed a handyman to remove it. The dryer vent line leading outside was similarly clogged, creating a fire hazard.
When Brown checked the dishwasher filter, she found that the high-end KitchenAid appliance was also caked with debris — in this case, even fruit labels and string were in the dishwasher filter. “I was astonished,” she says. “How do things like that end up in a dishwasher? It was quite an effort to clean.”
[READ: 10 Ways to Save Energy and Lower Utility Bills]
Test the smoke detectors. Test the batteries in all smoke detectors when you move in and then at least once a month. Battery-powered detectors can be checked by pressing the test button on the device. Hard-wired smoke detectors are powered by your home’s electrical system, but they usually have backup batteries and still need testing.
Update your address. Most new homeowners remember to file a change of address notification with the postal service. But what about updating the address on your driver’s license, voter registration, banking, insurance and subscription deliveries? Imagine treating yourself to a meal in your new home from an online food-ordering platform and having it delivered to your old address. Andrew Fortune, broker/owner of Great Colorado Homes in Colorado Springs, had a client, a professional photographer, who neglected to update his address with Amazon.com. When one of his camera lenses broke during the move and he needed that very lens for a photo shoot five days later, he ordered a new one from Amazon but forgot to update his address. His new lens shipped to the old address, and it took him over a month to track it down.
Update smart-home systems. If your house came complete with smart locks, security cameras, thermostats or an alarm system, be sure to reset them. Otherwise, someone else may have access to your home.
Create a folder to hold important receipts. C.Lee Cawley, a certified professional organizer in Arlington, Virginia, recommends setting up a basic two-pocket folder — her color choice is green to represent money — to hold receipts for expenditures that can ultimately reduce the capital gains tax when you sell. Sure, you’re just moving into a new home now and not thinking about selling it, but by saving the receipts for improvements that increase the tax basis of your home — like construction costs for bedroom or bathroom additions, new heating or plumbing systems or building a fence or deck — you will eventually be able to reduce any capital gains tax due when you sell.
“You can always digitize the receipts, but having the actual ones and knowing where they are really seems to make a difference, especially when the time comes 20 years down the road and the house has tripled in value,” says Cawley. “Those receipts can increase your cost basis and save you some taxes.”
Even if you’re just doing minor improvements, like adding grab bars to shower walls, file the receipts in your green folder. “Even smaller items add up,” says Cawley.
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Change the Locks! Eight Commonly Forgotten Tasks When Moving into a New Home originally appeared on usnews.com
