Moving to a New City: Everything I Bought to Set Up My Life

Moving to a new city means rebuilding your whole daily life from zero, usually in a hurry, usually while also starting a new job. I have done it. The first few weeks are a blur of realizing you own no can opener.

This is the actual list of what I bought to set up my apartment, organized by room so you can shop for one space at a time. Everything here is something I would buy again. Prices are approximate and current as of July 2026 — treat them as a budgeting guide, not a quote.

If you want a shortcut: the items marked ★ day one are the ones you will miss immediately. Buy those first, then work through the rest over your first month.

Kitchen

The kitchen eats the biggest share of the budget, mostly because of the water filter and the air fryer. Both were worth it for me — the air fryer became my main way of cooking, and the filter fixed water that genuinely tasted bad.

Bathroom

Rentals give you whatever fixtures the landlord bought in 2009. These four items fix the most common annoyances without drilling a single hole, which matters when you want your deposit back.

Bedroom

Sleep is the thing that determines whether the move goes well or badly, so this is the room I would not cheap out on. The air quality items were a surprise to me: a closed bedroom door overnight builds up more carbon dioxide than you would guess, and a monitor tells you whether you need to crack a window.

Living room

  • Heat control window film (~$37) — cuts heat and glare through a sun-facing window. Peels off later.
  • Smart light bulb (~$12) — turns a standing lamp on and off without rewiring anything.
  • Lift top coffee table (~$70) — the top raises to laptop height and there is hidden storage underneath. Useful when the living room is also the office.

Home office and desk

If you work from home even part of the week, this room pays for itself in comfort. The monitor light is the item people never think to buy and immediately notice.

Any room

  • ★ Dyson V8 Absolute cordless vacuum (~$300) — stick and handheld, wall dock. The one big-ticket item I would tell you not to skip.
  • ★ Command strips (~$20) — hang things without losing your deposit to wall damage.
  • Shoe and boot dryer (~$15) — foldable, 48°C, also does socks and gloves. If you are moving somewhere with real winters, this is the item you did not know to want.

Car

Personal and portable

Small things, but these are the ones you notice missing on the first morning in an empty apartment.

What I would buy first

If you are standing in an empty apartment right now, the order that worked for me was: bed and bedding, then the vacuum, then a power strip, then the kitchen basics (scale, knife sharpener, plates), then everything else as you discover you need it. The whole list adds up to roughly $4,200 if you bought every item, but nobody buys it all at once, and a good half of it is under $30.

The tape measure is genuinely the item I would put in your pocket on day one. Almost every mistake I made involved buying something that did not fit.

A few notes: prices are what I saw in July 2026 and will drift. Some listings go out of stock and come back, so if a link looks dead, search the product name instead. None of these links are affiliate links — this is just what I bought.