The First Week After Closing: A Practical Checklist

Day one: change the locks. I don't care how nice the sellers were. You don't know who has copies — the dog walker from two owners ago, the contractor who 'kept one just in case,' the neighbor who was watering plants in 2019. A locksmith is sixty dollars and an hour of peace of mind for the next twenty years.

Day two: photograph every breaker in the panel and label every switch in the house. You'll never have more patience for this than the week you move in.

Day three: introduce yourself to the immediate neighbors on both sides and across the street. A bottle of wine, a card, your phone number. Worth more than any home warranty.

Day four through seven: locate and test the main water shutoff, the gas shutoff, the smoke alarms, and the GFCI outlets in the kitchen and bathrooms. Replace any battery older than a year. Walk the roofline from the ground and note anything that looks off — a missing tile, a dark spot — so you have a baseline.

That's it. Everything else can wait. The boxes will still be there in November.