Amanda Kloots on Her First Home Without Late Husband Nick Cordero: 'I Was Terrified to Move'

Amanda Kloots has taken a big step since losing husband Nick Cordero to COVID-19: moving out of the home they once shared together and into a new one of her own with son Elvis Eduardo, 3.

"I was terrified to move," the 40-year-old The Talk co-host tells PEOPLE exclusively of the purchase that's just down the street from where she lived with Cordero.

The couple married in 2017 and moved to the West Coast from New York City together in March 2020 to fulfill the Broadway actor's dream of living in California.

The trek happened to be at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Cordero contracted and subsequently died from the disease after a harrowing, months-long battle on July 5, 2020.

His wife, who is also a fitness instructor and dancer, says she felt her husband's presence around her the very first time she entered her new home.

"I moved here in May of 2021 and it's been wonderful," Kloots tells PEOPLE. "I love this little house. It feels very much like Nick shifted us here. It was as soon as I walked in, there were just many, many signs."

"Above the piano, there was this picture of an astronaut in a full suit with the globe on, floating away from earth," she shares. "One of the things I give other people that are grieving is a little astronaut pin, because you feel so far away when you're going through the first stages of grief, in my opinion. You just feel like everything's happening around you and you can't really hear."

Not only did Kloots feel the musician's warm presence, but she could see and hear him too, while instantly having visions of their former East Coast life together.

"I walk in and the piano is there and there's all this vinyl," she says of the former owner's record collection. "The the sun was just coming in and that was the first thing that I saw."

She recalls, "I used to yell at Nick on a daily basis for the vinyl deliveries we would get to our apartment in New York City, that there was no more room for his vinyl."

Now that the mother of one has officially settled into her new space, she's keeping Cordero's memory alive with her own little nods.

"There's a lot," Kloots shares of the tokens to her late husband sprinkled throughout the home, including in reference to his song "Live Your Life," which Kloots played during his time in the hospital. "There's a beautiful photo, a painting upstairs on the top of the hallway. In Elvis' room, there's a couple pillows that have his face printed on it. All these table books are his."

Kloots wanted to make sure that Cordero's presence was felt, but not everywhere.

"Our previous house was so filled with him," Kloots says. "It was very important for me — and I made a very conscious effort — when we moved in here, to start fresh and have nods and touches, but not very outwardly."

"A lot of the things that were sent to me that were so beautiful, pictures of him, paintings of him, I really had to pack away and save or keep them at that other house because I really wanted this space to feel like a fresh start for us. It's very hard when you are trying to move forward to have those reminders everywhere. I just wanted to have little touches instead of everywhere I looked."

With her first movie, Fit For Christmas premiering December 4 on CBS, and a lot of surprises in store at The Talk, which is celebrating the holiday season with a new series, "The Talk Sleighs The Holidays," a 12-day gifting extravaganza totaling almost $4 million, the shows biggest holiday giveaway series to date, Kloots is finding herself in the right place to move forward.

"When we bought our other house, the first thing that we saw when we walked in was a piano and it just felt very right," Kloots shares. "Our first home was our dream house, but this would be Nick's dream home. He would've walked in this house and been like, 'I don't know what we have to do, what we have to sell, but we're buying this house.' I just felt right."

Fit For Christmas airs onSunday, December 4th at 8:30 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on CBS and Paramount+. The Talk airs weekdays 2 PM ET, 1 PM PT on CBS and streams on Paramount+.