Our Moving Binder

I've mentioned before this is our first time purchasing a home and I can tell you it has been a wonderful but also a very intimidating experience. And to be completely honest we are right in the middle of it.

Let me start off by saying purchasing a brand new home is awesome! Our builder agreed to make a few updates to the home as a part of our original offer, so we are very excited to have a somewhat "custom" home. While we didn't build the home from the ground up, we are definitely getting a say in the final finishing touches, which is really cool. But along with purchasing comes a laundry of list of "to-do's" on top of the traditional home buying "to-do" list which includes: negotiating with the seller, to arranging a mortgage, choosing home-owners insurance, packing, canceling/transferring services, canceling current lease agreements, etc.

This massive list of things to keep in order and things to do can be incredibly intimidating, so I decided to cut the stress out of the process before it started by putting together a home purchase/moving binder.

The binder holds everything I need for our home purchase, all the important contact information for our mortgage loans, real estate agents, home builder, etc. It also has monthly calendars so I can easily keep track of all of our meetings and appointments. I've also included a budgeting/finance section as well as a section for floor plans, neighborhood plans/layout and home amenities. Again, this just helps me keep everything I need in one place. And it's easy for me to carry around wherever I go.

I started with a binder from the Martha Stewart line at Staples. I also purchased a set of Martha Stewart post-its that fit right inside the front of the binder. I also used a few dividers I had on hand and one page protector that I also had (to hold, CD's or anything else that didn't fit in the binder).

Here are the dividers I created:
Contacts 
To Do List 
Calendar 
Finances, Mortgage & Insurance 
House Information 
Apt. Move Out Info 
Moving 
Other 

I purchased the contact, to do list, budget and finance templates here through IHeart Organizing's Etsy shop! If you haven't ever checked out her store, you should! She has some excellent templates that would help keep any household organized.

And there you have it! One easy-to-reference place for all our home purchase information!

**By the way, can you tell these images are sooo much better than iPhone pictures?! Yes! I finally got my new camera a few weeks ago and man I am loving it!!!