Moving can be a difficult task at any age, but moving seniors out of their homes or between care facilities comes with additional challenges. Seniors are often more resistant to changes in their living arrangements and typically require specialized physical and emotional support to successfully make this life change. Best practices for moving seniors requires clear communication, comprehensive moving strategies, secure transport, and coordination between the moving company, the seniors, and their caretakers. Continue reading to learn what to expect when hiring professional senior moving services. What are Senior Moving Needs? Seniors may have special moving needs depending on their situation, including physical and emotional considerations. This brief but non-exhaustive list is designed to help families get started contextualizing the challenging task of moving seniors to new living arrangements. It underscores the importance of hiring professional help to handle difficult tasks related to these limitations: Physical limitations may include walking, seeing, or hearing impairments. Mental limitations could include an inability to remember things, regulate mood, communicate expectations clearly, or follow changing plans. Spatial limitations may present a need to downsize their belongings before moving to their new home or facility. Emotional limitations could include a fear of leaving their current home, an inability to work with family, or a resistance to help. These moving needs differ by situation, but an expert moving team that offers senior moving services will be prepared to confront the limitations of senior moving with understanding and clear communication. What are the Benefits of Hiring a Moving Service? Confronting these limitations alone or as a family can strain already difficult relationships. Many adult children and family members find themselves in new caregiver roles as their parents age. This can make a life event like moving far more difficult. Consider these benefits of hiring a professional moving service when planning what to expect from your senior loved one’s transition: Professional Buffer: Moving services provide a professional buffer between you and your senior loved one. Instead of always initiating bad news and trying to negotiate the specifics of the move with them, an impartial team can take the communication lead, helping you take on more of a support role. Move Planning: Professional moving services can create comprehensive plans that tackle your specific situation. They can plan, organize, pack, transport, unload, and unpack your senior loved one’s items according to their instructions. This includes oversized, antique, and valuable belongings. Downsizing: Many adult children struggle to help their older parents downsize their belongings. This can become a necessity when moving into a smaller home or care facility. Therefore, a professional moving service can be of great help in guiding and supporting the move by organizing belongings throughout the process. They can help seniors or their families make informed decisions about or provide resources for donating, selling, discarding, and even storing their overflow items in secure storage facilities. Coordination: In many cases, senior moves require coordinating with their new living communities. Professional moving teams often have pre-existing relationships with local communities that allow them to touch base with community staff, schedule the move, arrange parking, and meet other needs specific to that community. Compassion: Many people become emotionally strained trying to help their senior loved ones move. Professional movers can offer compassionate, patient communication that helps families move their loved ones with empathy and reassurance. Senior Moving Checklist Follow this checklist to move your senior loved ones with as little conflict as possible: Plan Ahead: Senior moving is stressful, especially with last-minute pressure from outside sources such as community deadlines. Organize your checklists, set goals per week or month depending on your timeline, and prioritize communication. Declutter: Decluttering and reorganizing belongings is a significant aspect of senior moving. In many cases, moving to a smaller home or care facility requires downsizing to meet the living and storage needs of the new location. This can be a substantial task, which is why professional moving services offer help with organization and may provide storage facilities if needed. Organize and Pack: Packing can be difficult since prioritization is key. Labeling boxes per room, starting with essentials, and prioritizing valuables can be difficult, especially for seniors with numerous belongings. Hire Professionals: Hiring a professional moving service allows seniors and their families to focus on communication and logistics while leaving the complicated packing, decluttering, transporting, storage, and unloading tasks to the professionals. Contact Professional Moving Services for Help with Senior Moving Senior moving can be stressful due to communication issues, logistical problems, and conflicting expectations. Many seniors do not want to move out of their family homes or into care facilities, and their families struggle to communicate their needs due to complex personal, health, or financial problems. At MG Moving Services, our professional team offers more than comprehensive packing and moving services. We offer patient communication that is respectful of clients regardless of their age and a clear moving process that prioritizes the needs of the client and their families. Contact our team to learn how we can help make your senior loved one’s move efficient and stress-free. Contact our team at MG Moving Services to learn how we can help make your move efficient and stress-free.
