Buying a home is one of the biggest milestones of your life. You’ve survived the viewings, the surveys, the solicitors, the nerve-shredding wait, and the moment someone finally handed you a set of keys that actually belong to you.
So now what? A cup of tea and a sit on the floor? Absolutely not. You’ve earned something far more spectacular than that. Here’s your definitive, gloriously unhinged guide to celebrating the purchase of your new home.
1. Throw a ‘chaos housewarming’ before you own a single piece of furniture
There is something joyful about a completely empty house. The acoustics are incredible, the space feels enormous, and everything echoes. So make the most of it.
Invite your closest friends, blast music from a portable speaker, order a mountain of pizza, and have the most surreal dinner party of your life sitting cross-legged on the bare floorboards. There’s no furniture, and absolutely no rules, which is why it’s a party that works so well.
2. Slide across every floor in your socks
This is non-negotiable. The moment you cross the threshold, remove your shoes, get a running start, and slide. Do every room. Do the hallway twice. If you have hard floors throughout, you may be sliding for some time, and that is perfectly fine.
3. Have a champagne picnic in the garden at midnight
Pop a bottle of champagne (or prosecco — we’re homeowners now, not monarchs) and take it into the back garden after dark. Lie on a blanket, stare at the stars, and let the absurd reality of it all sink in. This patch of sky? Yours. That slightly overgrown hedge? Also yours. Enjoy it.
4. Order a custom cake in the shape of your house
When it comes to cake, there’s almost nothing that can’t be achieved, as Cake Boss has taught us. Commission a local baker to create a cake that is a near-perfect fondant replica of your new home. Complete with tiny edible windows, a marzipan front door, and your name piped above the letterbox. Then eat the roof first, because you can.
5. Host a “Grand Tour” for anyone who will listen
Channel your inner estate agent and give a wildly enthusiastic guided tour of every room to every friend and family member you can round up. Point out features as though they are extraordinary. “And here, if you’ll notice, is the boiler cupboard, truly a statement piece. Note the pipework.” Make it theatrical. Make it ridiculous. You’ve earned the right to be proud of every square inch.
6. Treat yourself to some flowers
In the whirlwind of moving, it’s easy to forget the small touches that make a house feel like a home from the very first day. Consider ordering next-day delivery flowers to arrive on your first morning, a huge, extravagant bouquet that fills the hallway with colour and scent. They’ll make you feel happy for days and act as a reminder of what you’ve achieved. You deserve them.
7. Write your name (and the date) somewhere hidden
Before the decorators arrive and before the furniture goes in, find a hidden corner, maybe behind a radiator, inside a cupboard, under a floorboard if you’re feeling dramatic, and write your name and the date you moved in. Future owners will find it one day, perhaps decades from now, and wonder about you. It costs nothing and lasts forever.
8. Recreate the scene from “Risky Business”
You know the one. Socks. Sliding. A classic rock anthem turned up to an antisocial volume. This differs from tip number two in that it requires full commitment: the sunglasses, the shirt, the whole performance. If you have a long hallway, even better.
9. Get a ridiculously oversized “home sweet home” doormat
Who needs a tasteful, understated doormat? Certainly not you. So don’t buy a tasteful, understated one. An enormous, gaudy, unapologetically over-the-top doormat that takes up most of the doorstep. Make your entrance statement before anyone has even knocked.
10. Have a bonfire of the stressful paperwork
You will have accumulated a truly stunning amount of paperwork during the buying process. Mortgage offers, survey reports, solicitor letters, Land Registry documents you only half-understood. Once everything is officially signed and done, keep what you legally need and then ceremonially burn the rest in a garden fire pit, ideally while wearing a dressing gown and laughing maniacally. (Always do this safely and check local rules first, naturally. Don’t tell the council ‘Sarah from Dream of Home told me I could’.)
11. Sleep in every room
On your first few nights, rotate each room you sleep in. Master bedroom on night one, spare room on night two, and if you’re truly committed to the bit, the living room floor by night three. Get to know every corner of your home from the horizontal perspective.
12. Take a ‘before’ photo in every room
Stand in the centre of each empty room and take a photo of yourself. You will want these one day. When the rooms are full of life, furniture, mess, memories, and children’s drawings stuck to the fridge, you’ll look back at these bare, echo-filled spaces and feel something quite extraordinary.
13. Commission a house portrait
Hire a local artist or find someone on Etsy to paint or illustrate your new home. It makes for a genuinely brilliant piece of wall art, a record of the house as it looked when it was first yours, and a wonderful heirloom to pass down.
14. Plant something
Even if you have the blackest thumb in Britain, plant something on the day you move in. A tree, a rosebush, a pot of herbs on the windowsill. Watch it grow over the years. It becomes a living record of your time in the house.
15. Have a karaoke night
Before the sofas arrive, rent (or borrow) a karaoke machine and host a full-blown karaoke evening in your cavernous, acoustically superb empty living room. The natural reverb alone will make everyone sound significantly better than they are. Award a prize. Make it a night people talk about for years.
16. Order an obscene takeaway feast the Gilmore Girls would be proud of
Remember the episode where Rory moves to Yale and convinces her mum to stay for the first night and they try every takeaway within a certain radius? Absolutely do that! Every cuisine. Multiple restaurants. Delivered simultaneously if you can manage the logistics. Sit on the floor, spread it all out like a banquet, and eat far more than is sensible. You are a homeowner. You have earned this.
17. Send handwritten “We’ve Moved!” letters to everyone you love
Group chats and social media posts are the usual, but a handwritten letter arriving through the door is an event. Write to your grandparents, your oldest friends, your favourite aunt. Tell them where you are and invite them to visit. It is one of the loveliest things you can do with a new address.
18. Run through the sprinkles
If it’s summer, if you have a garden, and if there’s a hosepipe ban — well, this one stays on the list regardless. You are a homeowner. Live a little.
Buying a home is extraordinary. It is stressful and expensive and occasionally maddening, and when it finally happens it deserves to be celebrated with full, unrestrained, slightly unhinged joy. So slide across the floors, eat the cake, fill the hall with flowers, and make the walls ring with laughter from the very first night.
Sarah is the creator and founder of Dream of Home, a website that began during Sarah’s first home renovation project. Since then, the site has grown and Sarah produces content around all things home, including home decor, DIY projects, renovation tips, inspiration and more. In her spare time, she loves to read and garden.
