Moving can be stressful for seniors and their families. Many seniors have accumulated a lifetime of belongings, which may not fit in their new home or care facility. In many cases, downsizing these belongings is one of the most difficult parts of the moving process.
Thankfully, it’s also one of the easiest to resolve. Many moving companies offer storage facilities, which allow seniors and their families to store overflow items.
However, this is not an optimal long-term solution in most cases. When downsizing becomes necessary, many turn to a senior downsizing service for help. Moving companies that offer expertise in downsizing belongings are able to help seniors relocate without unnecessary stress.
In this guide, we go over some tips and strategies to help when downsizing your home or your loved one’s home.
1. Start the Process Early
Downsizing can disrupt a moving timeline, especially for those who have more belongings than estimated. To mitigate the stress of last-minute downsizing, begin the process at least three months in advance of moving day. This will give you or your senior family member enough time to go through everything and decide what to keep, donate, or store.
To use a common example, you may have valuable or meaningful items that are too large to store in the new location, such as a piece of family furniture. By starting the downsizing process early, you can find a safe location for these important items, such as another family member’s home or a storage facility.
Even for smaller items, the sooner you begin sorting, the easier moving day will be.
2. Use Labeled Boxes
Labels can help you sort belongings without losing track of your decisions. Labeling bins or boxes as “donate” and others as “keep” or “throw away” can make sorting more decisive too, to avoid rehashing a dilemma that you’ve already solved. Using this three-option system, books, clothes, and other belongings that haven’t been used in years can be sorted by value and kept, given to family, or donated to local charities.
Friends and family can help make some of the decisions if certain items prove difficult. One of the benefits of starting early is that you can discover the “maybes” sooner, giving you more time to make important decisions on moving day.
3. Create an Inventory List
An inventory spreadsheet can be helpful in downsizing a cluttered home. Taking inventory will help itemize groups of belongings by room, making unpacking easier on the other end. An accurate inventory list will also help to identify duplicate and redundant items. Labeling storage boxes by number and room, and identifying this on the sheet can make tracking must-have items easier when unpacking.
If you have accumulated redundant furniture, multiple copies of books and movies, or similar-use items, you can use the spreadsheet to catalog them and get rid of the ones you no longer need. Even if you want to keep an item, identifying duplicates with a full inventory sheet can help you weed out easy donations and save room in your new home.
4. Rent a Storage Unit
Renting a storage unit may not involve getting rid of any belongings, but even the process of packing things for storage will reveal duplicates and potential donations. A storage unit will help offload the stress of giving everything away, especially for those whose new locations have drastically different storage means.
Commonly, homeowners moving into a care facility or living community have lived in the same home for many years, making it difficult to make split decisions on which belongings to keep. Especially for those who waited until the month or week of the move to start sorting items, a storage unit can take the pressure off until a more convenient time.
5. Buy a Shredder
Many homeowners hold onto old papers, including bank statements, receipts, and other documents because they are wary about throwing them away. This leads to unneeded clutter that shouldn’t follow them to their new home or living community.
Investing in a shredder can help eliminate this clutter while giving you peace of mind. If a document is in question, you can scan it into a computer or photograph it with a phone before shredding it, just in case you want to reference it later.
6. Use Online Marketplaces
While garage sales, gifts, and donations are always an option, not everyone wants to deal with in-person transactions. Online marketplaces help seniors and their families offload items and make some money at the same time.
Consignment shops, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and more can provide the means to declutter your home without throwing valuable items away. This is another benefit of starting the moving process early, giving you and your family enough time to create seller profiles, contact buyers, and offload clutter on these markets.
Contact a MG Moving Services for Senior Downsizing Services
A moving company that offers senior downsizing services can help you downsize, pack, and transport your belongings, regardless of how much you have. At MG Moving Services, our team has experience with large estates, moving seniors to smaller homes and living communities, and planning multi-step moves while prioritizing client communication.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you move your belongings and mitigate moving day stress. Our experienced team can help you downsize and make decisions along the way, or store the overflow in one of our secure storage facilities until you decide how to address them.
