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I just wanted to offer sympathy, unpacking is so much harder than unpacking! Standing in the middle of all the boxes and not knowing where to start is the worst.

That being said, I would say yes to your friend. She knows you just moved, she's not going to expect you to have everything organized, she just wants to see you before she's all caught up with her new baby. It might be a nice break for you from the unpacking chaos.

It's hard! Any way you can get help for a couple days or even hours? That's the only way I got it done. Even if you have a short time you can try to be strategic about what gets opened and where the boxes go so that some spaces feel organized.

@aprild: Commiseration here. We are moving in two months with our (to be) 16 month old and oh. my. god. Dreading the packing and unpacking .....

I just plow through it. I loathe living with boxes and I'm a weirdo who enjoys unpacking. The last time we moved, I had everything unpacked in 3 days. Art was hung within 2 weeks and we definitely had visitors within that time frame. My kids were 3.5 yo and 5 months at the time but the older one was at daycare and the younger one had a morning babysitter. Can you unpack their rooms first? Or set up a play area somewhere where you can keep an eye on them while you work?

@aprild: It does suck.

We've moved so often (about every year!) since having our first kid (were going to move out of town, so vacated our place, then to a nicer place three times!) that we have a decent routine and tend to ask MIL to babysit the day of the move and are unpacked for the most part within a day. But we have a small place and like I said it's because we've done it a lot. I usually plan out where I want things once we sign the lease. Our next move will hopefully be over the summer because we are planning on buying. I can't wait to be more settled.

Oh, and the thing that doesn't always get done and if it does takes weeks is hanging stuff up. I hate that task. So many 3m strips (rentals.)

We also moved on saturday! I only have the one DD right now (18 months) but I am 24 weeks pregnant.

Right now my method is just get things away and clear the boxes. Then I've been slowly rearranging things as I use them. My husband gets really overwhelmed while unpacking because he thinks everything needs to be in it's final spot immediately. My method is just to do an approximation and then slowly reorganize. In any house I'm going to be doing things differently, and I'll need time to figure out the best way to use this space.

We also discovered we need more furniture. Another bookcase, a few new rugs, and some furniture for DD. So I'm going to have some boxes laying around for awhile until we find some more furniture.

My basic strategy was not to do room-by-room but instead to unpack what we needed. So first thing was set up DD's room enough that she had a place to sleep and nap, and I could get to her diaper stuff. Next came the kitchen. Unpack enough that we could eat and drink and clean. Next bathroom. Unpack enough so we could bathe.

Basically everything was half-finished for a long time because I just needed to live in addition to unpacking. I still don't have anything on the walls and don't have our entertainment stuff set up. And I need to reorganize all the closets. But there aren't a million boxes lying around which helps a LOT with my anxiety.

We also ate nothing but pizza and bagels for two days straight because there was just no time to get groceries.

Good luck! We moved from one small apartment to another small apartment so we don't even have a lot of stuff and I was going nuts for awhile.

One thing that really helped me A LOT was leaving DD with DH for an hour and just going to Starbucks with a book and sitting in peace and drinking my iced chai. It helped me so much to just take an hour where I wasn't shopping or cleaning or packing or cooking.

Unpacking is WAY harder, but I also love it -- clearing out, cleaning out, and finding a place for everything is my jam. Well, before kids it was anyways! the last 2 times we moved, we had our parents come for a week so they could entertain the kids while we (I...) unpacked. I'm also way obsessive about it and just do it all, like, immediately. Super-crazy over here, though.

If it's a good friend, I'd just let her come. It would be less stressful to me because YOU JUST MOVED! so you have a built in excuse for why there are boxes, not the right furniture, etc etc. It would be more stressful to me to put her off for a couple weeks because I'd be in that awful inbetween of "I didn't JUST move", "But I'm still unpacking...", and "Yes, I know that doesn't really fit there/we need an X/etc" So I'd offer to have her for a quick visit now, and then plan to visit her after the baby comes. Then you should get some breathing room to make some progress and she will be wow-ed when she comes back

ETA: or too tired from newborn/lack of sleep to comment! haha

Oh and as for visitors, it's kind of nice right away, because you have a built in excuse for it being a mess. Five months in I think we have outlived that excuse but it still feels like a mess...