How to Move From a Long Time House to Senior Living

Moving is a huge undertaking at any age. For the senior, downsizing is more than a logistical challenge of just moving. It also requires someone to dismantle years of their life and to get rid of as much as 80 percent of their belongings.  Even with the help of loved ones this can feel like an insurmountable burden, and often will delay a move while a senior’s anxiety makes them freeze. I’ll explain how I handled this process with my mother, in the hopes that you pick up some pearls of wisdom you can use in your situation.

My first problem was that I live in Austin Texas, while my mother was in Northern Virginia. So I contacted someone local with The National Association of Senior Move Managers, who contacted a compatriot in Virginia. The Virginia move manager handled the organization and packing, and hired the moving company.
The local move manager handled the unpacking and apartment decorating.

The next thing we did was to have the Virginia move manager send an organizer to my mother’s house for two hours a day, twice a week. The organizer’s job was to help her decide what to keep, what to throw away and what to give away.  Together they went through every closet, filing cabinet, dresser, shelves and cabinet. The organizer was very gentle with my mother, which was important. 

My mother needed to tell the organizer all about the things they were organizing. She had to try on the gown she wore to my sister’s wedding and show the organizer. She had to tell the organizer where she bought something and why it mattered. She needed to share with someone her stories, a companion to shadow her and listen. But when she had done all that, she was ready to part with the formerly precious item. After 8 weeks most of the house was well organized and my mother felt relieved and much lighter. She actually said it was a cathartic process for her!

A month later, I flew up to Virginia and met my two siblings there for three days. The move manager gave us three different colors of masking tape, and the siblings went through the house putting masking tape on whatever furniture or painting we wanted. Where there were multiple pieces of tape, we negotiated. With the color coded tape the move manager could pack the moving truck such that it made stops in each city where a sibling lived and off-load that part of the furniture and appropriate boxes. The only part of the load that arrived in Austin was the furniture that was to move into my mother’s apartment, and that furniture I was inheriting.

As part of the three-day process, we siblings held a beauty contest, interviewing three realtors to sell the house. When we chose one, we turned the keys over to her with instructions and a budget to paint, fix up and stage the house as she saw fit to maximize the sale price of the house.  Whatever was left in the house we left to the organizer to dispose of, and that included a lot of stuff in the basement and attic, some of it functional, some of it junk. In our case there wasn’t enough stuff left for an estate sale, but that is often the best way to empty a house, and the move manager can organize that as well.

Key takeaways in this scenario:

1. Hire an expert in the moving process
2. Use an organizer with the express purpose of downsizing
3. Rely on the move manager for recommendations for other professionals, such as realtors or estate sale experts

Now let me address a situation where there is a crisis and there isn’t the ability to move slowly and deliberately. If the senior is in the hospital or rehabilitation facility, it is best to not go back home, but instead to go directly to a Senior Living Community. If you take the senior back home to stay even one night, they may decide they are safe enough to stay and refuse to move to senior living. I often say: never let a good crisis go to waste.

In this case, you move whatever furniture they will need in the senior living community, including clothes, photos and other precious personal belongings. This separates the senior from the task of organizing the house, removing emotional baggage from the process. Once everything is out of the house that the senior needs, the children can take over, organize papers, distribute whatever items family will want, and then hold a garage sale or hire an estate sale company. A senior move manager can be helpful in this entire process as well, handling the initial move, organizing the clutter, helping prepare for a home sale and turning the house over to a realtor in a condition ready for her expertise.

A senior move is a huge undertaking, however it is handled. I hope this breakdown has been helpful. Please read my other Senior Living articles for more information on how Assisted Living and Memory Care communities function. My name is Michael Gill, and if you are interested in Assisted Living, Independent Living, or Memory Care in the Austin Texas area, please call me at (512) 630-7133.