METCALF MOVING BLOG

February 19, 2021

5 Tips to Help Your Senior Parents Move

Moving your own stuff for a household move is tricky. Getting your senior parents ready to leave a home they’ve lived in for decades is an entirely different experience.

It’s not just the act of sorting and packing. You have to help your parents figure out what they need and the best way to let go of things they don’t.

How do you persuade them to go along with it? Can you make it easier? These five ideas may help.

1. Allow Extra Time for Packing

Packing usually takes longer than you plan. And when you’re working on someone else’s house, it will probably take longer.

Your parents might feel reluctant to move. If one or both of your parents have memory or mobility concerns, you’ll need more time.

Add at least a few weeks to your packing schedule. Take two or three months if you can. The time to process each room will be less of a rush.

2. Sort Valued Belongings

When you pack your own things, you might start by getting rid of anything unnecessary. As you pack up your parents’ home, you may want to begin by organizing the most important possessions.

If the collection spreads out around the house, you probably need to track it down. Make a list of what you should include and go for the easy finds.

Once you have most of the collections, you can set them in a safe place while you sort through everything else. Packing complete sets protects them for travel.

3. Make Organizing a Group Project

Packing often runs smoothly if you work together in each room. It’s too easy to say that you will tackle one room while your parent works on another.

But it would help if you got your parents’ buy-in on your choices. And if you think you’ll get push-back on downsizing, you’ll want to help them make decisions.

Find a good time each day to pack, and spend time on it together. If you can’t help in person, encourage them to sort while you support them on a video chat.

4. Separate Memories from Clutter

Once you live in a place for a long time, it’s hard to separate your possessions from the memories you have involving them. Often, people end up with more stuff than they need because they don’t know how to get rid of sentimental clutter.

Of course, an inability to declutter can make it harder to find room in the new place for all the essentials. It’s essential to prioritize the functional items first. Plan to take pictures or make a scrapbook of certain things, with the goal of donating or giving them away.

5. Maintain a Consistent Layout

Consistency is useful for anyone, especially for people as they get older. If your parents need memory care, they may struggle to manage a completely new organization.

Fortunately, you can avoid a lot of stress by trying to keep functional rooms the same. Put the TV in the same spot in relation to the couches or chair.

It will be easier for your parents to get used to a new place with a similar layout.

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Helping your parents move is easier when you have an expert moving company to assist you. For more information, contact us to request a price quote.

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    Everyone was great. From the man who came to give me the estimate, to the person who called to make sure things were happening on time to the fantastic men who moved me out and in. Moving across country was stressful and it was great to have such a wonderful experience!

    - Lisa R.

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