Move-in checklists, room by room

Which list do you need?

Buy it in three waves, not one

This is the single most useful piece of advice on this page, and it saves money as well as stress. Split the list by when you need it:

1. Night one — about fifteen items, roughly $180. Bedding, towels, a shower curtain and liner, a plunger, trash cans, toilet paper and soap, basic plates and cutlery, and a lamp with bulbs. Enough to sleep, wash and eat.
2. Week one — about $320. Cookware, a knife, a cutting board, a dish rack, cleaning supplies, curtains. Now you can cook.
3. Month one — about $350. Microwave, food storage, bathroom storage, a tool kit, safety items, a drying rack.
4. Months two to six. The sofa, the rug, a coffee maker, any second appliance, decoration. By then you know your space and your habits.

Spreading it out means you buy what you actually need rather than what you anticipated needing in a shop in week one, and that difference is usually worth a few hundred dollars.

Measure before you buy anything

The most expensive mistakes on a move are measuring failures, not purchasing ones. Three things:

• Room dimensions, and where the outlets and radiators are — they decide where furniture can actually go.
• Free counter width in the kitchen, and the height to the underside of the upper cabinets. This is what decides which microwave, air fryer and coffee maker fit.
• The route, not just the room. Doorway widths, the narrowest point of the hallway, the stairwell turn, and the lift’s internal dimensions. Furniture that fits the room and will not rotate around a landing is the classic and most expensive failure.

A 25-foot tape measure with a magnetic hook lets you do all of that alone, which is how it actually gets done — see our tape measure picks.

What to buy used, and the one caution

Buying used instead of new is the largest single financial decision in furnishing a first place — roughly $2,000 on a one-bedroom. These items are functionally identical secondhand:

Plates, bowls, mugs, glasses and cutlery (often $15 for a set of four against $60 new); cast iron, where rust is cosmetic and comes off with steel wool and oil; sheet pans, mixing bowls, stockpots and colanders, where stains are cosmetic; bed frames, dining tables and chairs, desks, bookshelves and lamps.

Buy new regardless: a mattress, knives, anything nonstick, cutting boards, pillows and towels. Condition directly affects hygiene or performance in every case.

The one caution: inspect the seams and underside of any used sofa or mattress carefully before bringing it into your home. Bed bugs are a real, expensive and difficult problem, and a free sofa that brings them is not free.

The things everyone forgets

None of these is expensive. All of them are annoying to be without on the first evening, and they appear on every one of our lists for that reason.

• Shower curtain rings — sold separately from the curtain
• Light bulbs, and a lamp if there is no overhead light in the living room
• A can opener
• Bin bags in the right size for the bin you bought
• A plunger — the one item that becomes urgent at 11pm
• Curtains or blinds, and something to hang them from
• Batteries: AA, AAA and 9V for the smoke alarm
• An extension cord and a surge-protected power strip
• A second phone charger, for the bedroom
• A doorstop

How these lists are put together

Every price on these pages comes from a live Amazon lookup and carries the date it was checked. We do not publish a number we cannot verify: if a price has not been refreshed within 48 hours it disappears and the page says “check price” instead of showing you something stale.

We also do not claim to have tested these products in a lab, because we do not have one. Our picks come from published specifications, the physical design, and the patterns in what owners consistently report after a year — and we say which is which on every page. That is set out in full in how we pick.