diff --git a/finetrainers/trainer.py b/finetrainers/trainer.py
index 0f3e5b9..04f5737 100644
--- a/finetrainers/trainer.py
+++ b/finetrainers/trainer.py
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ from .utils.file_utils import string_to_filename
 from .utils.optimizer_utils import get_optimizer
 from .utils.memory_utils import get_memory_statistics, free_memory, make_contiguous
 from .utils.torch_utils import unwrap_model, align_device_and_dtype
-from .utils.checkpointing import sort_out_and_load_latest_ckpt_states, save_intermediate_ckpt_states
+from .utils.checkpointing import get_latest_ckpt_path_to_resume_from, get_intermediate_ckpt_path
 
 
 logger = get_logger("finetrainers")
@@ -561,12 +561,13 @@ class Trainer:
         initial_global_step = 0
         
         # Potentially load in the weights and states from a previous save
-        initial_global_step, global_step, first_epoch = sort_out_and_load_latest_ckpt_states(
-            accelerator=self.state.accelerator, 
+        resume_from_checkpoint_path, initial_global_step, global_step, first_epoch = get_latest_ckpt_path_to_resume_from(
             resume_from_checkpoint=self.args.resume_from_checkpoint, 
             num_update_steps_per_epoch=self.state.num_update_steps_per_epoch, 
             output_dir=self.args.output_dir
         )
+        if resume_from_checkpoint_path:
+            self.state.accelerator.load_state(resume_from_checkpoint_path)
 
         progress_bar = tqdm(
             range(0, self.state.train_steps),
@@ -699,9 +700,10 @@ class Trainer:
                     # Checkpointing
                     if accelerator.distributed_type == DistributedType.DEEPSPEED or accelerator.is_main_process:
                         if global_step % self.args.checkpointing_steps == 0:
-                            save_intermediate_ckpt_states(
-                                accelerator=accelerator, checkpointing_limit=self.args.checkpointing_limit, step=global_step, output_dir=self.args.output_dir
+                            save_path = get_intermediate_ckpt_path(
+                                checkpointing_limit=self.args.checkpointing_limit, step=global_step, output_dir=self.args.output_dir
                             )
+                            accelerator.save_state(save_path)
 
                 # Maybe run validation
                 should_run_validation = (
@@ -748,12 +750,11 @@ class Trainer:
                 transformer_lora_layers=transformer_lora_layers,
             )
 
+            self.validate(step=global_step, final_validation=True)
             if self.args.push_to_hub:
                 upload_folder(
                     repo_id=self.state.repo_id, folder_path=self.args.output_dir, ignore_patterns=["checkpoint-*"]
                 )
-            
-            self.validate(step=global_step, final_validation=True)
 
         del self.tokenizer, self.text_encoder, self.transformer, self.vae, self.scheduler
         free_memory()
@@ -795,6 +796,7 @@ class Trainer:
             )
         else:
             # `torch_dtype` is manually set within `initialize_pipeline()`.
+            self._delete_components()
             pipeline = self.model_config["initialize_pipeline"](
                 model_id=self.args.pretrained_model_name_or_path, 
                 device=accelerator.device,
diff --git a/finetrainers/utils/checkpointing.py b/finetrainers/utils/checkpointing.py
index 1a69a1f..11b94fc 100644
--- a/finetrainers/utils/checkpointing.py
+++ b/finetrainers/utils/checkpointing.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import os
+from typing import Tuple
 from accelerate.logging import get_logger
 from ..constants import FINETRAINERS_LOG_LEVEL
 from ..utils.file_utils import find_files, delete_files
@@ -6,13 +7,14 @@ from ..utils.file_utils import find_files, delete_files
 logger = get_logger("finetrainers")
 logger.setLevel(FINETRAINERS_LOG_LEVEL)
 
-def sort_out_and_load_latest_ckpt_states(
-        accelerator, resume_from_checkpoint, num_update_steps_per_epoch, output_dir
-    ):
+def get_latest_ckpt_path_to_resume_from(
+    resume_from_checkpoint: str, num_update_steps_per_epoch: int, output_dir: str
+) -> Tuple[str, int, int, int]:
     if not resume_from_checkpoint:
         initial_global_step = 0
         global_step = 0
         first_epoch = 0
+        resume_from_checkpoint_path = None
     else:
         if resume_from_checkpoint != "latest":
             path = os.path.basename(resume_from_checkpoint)
@@ -29,18 +31,19 @@ def sort_out_and_load_latest_ckpt_states(
             )
             resume_from_checkpoint = None
             initial_global_step = 0
+            resume_from_checkpoint_path = None
         else:
             logger.info(f"Resuming from checkpoint {path}")
-            accelerator.load_state(os.path.join(output_dir, path))
+            resume_from_checkpoint_path = os.path.join(output_dir, path)
             global_step = int(path.split("-")[1])
 
             initial_global_step = global_step
             first_epoch = global_step // num_update_steps_per_epoch
 
-    return initial_global_step, global_step, first_epoch
+    return resume_from_checkpoint_path, initial_global_step, global_step, first_epoch
 
 
-def save_intermediate_ckpt_states(accelerator, checkpointing_limit, step, output_dir):
+def get_intermediate_ckpt_path(checkpointing_limit: int, step: int, output_dir: str) -> str:
     # before saving state, check if this save would set us over the `checkpointing_limit`
     if checkpointing_limit is not None:
         checkpoints = find_files(output_dir, prefix="checkpoint")
@@ -53,5 +56,5 @@ def save_intermediate_ckpt_states(accelerator, checkpointing_limit, step, output
 
     logger.info(f"Checkpointing at step {step}")
     save_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"checkpoint-{step}")
-    accelerator.save_state(save_path)
-    logger.info(f"Saved state to {save_path}")
\ No newline at end of file
+    logger.info(f"Saving state to {save_path}")
+    return save_path
\ No newline at end of file