This is the perfect time to start over. Pare down your accumulated possessions to the minimal amount. Have a garage sale, auction it off on eBay or donate it to charity. This critical first step will not only make your current digs easier to pack up, but it will put you miles ahead during move-in.

Buy as well as you can afford to spend in this area it makes a huge difference. Opt for new bedding first, paint the bedroom walls to complement your new bedding, add coordinating window treatments, opt for a lighter palette of colors and more translucent treatments or deeper tones and more substantial coverings that block out the light. Buy that bed you've always dreamed about but choose carefully, it should mirror your personality, fit your room comfortably and stay with you for years.

Live in your new house for at least two months before you make any significant purchases. How you think you're going to use the house and how you actually live in the house are commonly two different things. Maybe spending on renovating the bathroom isn't quite as important as beefing up the kitchen and dining area for maximum entertaining purposes., for example.

Retail stores love to perpetuate the fallacy that everything has to match. Don't do it! A few pieces with the same styling are fine, but any more than that and your home has the lifeless, generic look of a furniture showroom. Make sure your own personal style shows through, which most likely isn't bland, beige and boring. Top priority should be proportion, scale and balance of your furniture and accessories within each room.

If you've moved into your first place with furniture that spans the 1960s to now, don't worry. The easiest, most economical way to overcome this seemingly insurmountable problem is unifying through color, find curtains, rugs or accessories in this common hue and see how the pieces begin to complement each other.

If your kitchen cabinets are drab, for instance, freshen them with paint and change out the hardware and don't bother installing overly decorative and very expensive cabinet hardware on cheaply fabricated woodwork. It will look out of place and the money can be put to better use elsewhere. Another inexpensive solution with a big payoff is installing dimmer switches to keep light levels low for a midnight bathroom break or to create a romantic mood for bubble baths for two.