When you have an elderly loved one who no longer feels able to maintain their current family home, you may wonder what you can do to help them during the transition into their new, downsized residence. The following are steps you can take to assist your loved one in their move.
Assist with Categorization and Organization
On top of moving into a new home, your loved one will have to consider what they want to keep for use in their new smaller home and what they will be getting rid of. This can be a difficult process, especially without a categorization and organization system.
You can help them with that system and also help them to determine which items are keepers and which should go. The first step is to come up with a labeling system for their items. Colored sticky notes are a great option with each color depicting a different category. For example, blue could be keep, yellow could be storage, pink could be trash, and green could be sell/give away. This creates a clear visual system to separate items and plan the move.
Hire Movers For Challenging and Valuable Items
Your elderly loved one is downsizing for many reasons. However, their age and perhaps their ailing health are major contributors, meaning they may have trouble physically moving heavy or fragile items themselves.
To avoid injury to yourself, your loved one, or their valuables, you should hire moving companies to take care of just those items. For example, if your loved one owns a piano, then you will want to hire piano movers. Piano movers like Extreme Piano Moving have the equipment to properly pad and protect the piano and transport it safely to the new home or to storage. Because pianos are both cumbersome and also surprisingly delicate, hiring professional to move it will reduce stress and the risk of damage.
Movers can also be hired for valuable objects like collectibles and collections of original artworks that could be easily damaged in transport. These moving services should have you or your loved one certify that those items arrived in the same condition they were in before moving before leaving the premises. This ensures that the right party is held accountable if an item is damaged in the move.
Now that you know a few of the ways that you can help your elderly loved one with the moving and downsizing process, you can get started and provide them with the support and assistance they need.
