It is hard enough to find the right assisted living community for your parent, but the actual act of moving is a big undertaking in its own right. You not only have to worry about the logistics of the move but you also need to try to make the process stress-free for your parent.
Learn more from these seven tips for moving your elderly parents.
7 Tips for Moving Your Elderly Parents
Downsizing is perhaps the most challenging aspect of all for those moving to assisted living from a single family home.
Here are seven tips to help you get the job done, while making the move easy on your parent:
1. Measure Space
Know the floor plan of your parent’s new apartment at assisted living, including total square feet. This will help you decide just how much downsizing needs to be done, and what rooms need to be furnished.
2. Involve Your Parents
Get your parent involved in the process from the start. Ask what is essential for them to bring to their new home. Make sure to pack everything that’s important to your parent, according to how much space is available. If your parent wants to bring more than what’s possible, have a conversation about priorities and remind them that your family will take good care of items that can’t be brought along. Ask about any places that might have hidden important documents or objects.
3. Take Inventory
Take a good look around you parent’s home and see how much you’re dealing with. Don’t forget to check the closets! Clothing is part of the downsizing equation too.
4. Involve Other Family Members
There are likely to be lots of objects important to you and your family that won’t be moving with your parent, but certainly shouldn’t be disposed of. Are there pieces of furniture, clothing, dishes or vases that are important to your siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins? Invite your other family members over to the house your parent is moving from to see if there’s anything special they’d like to keep. Maybe they’ll even help with the move too!
5. Estate or Yard Sale
After your parent has identified everything she or he wants to bring along to assisted living, and after you and your family have had a chance to pick through the rest, there’s likely to be plenty of items of value remaining. Have a sale to get rid of more. Consider donating anything remaining that could potentially be used by someone else.
6. Donating to Charity
Call Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul to have them pick up any items that could benefit others. After all the preceding steps, most of what’s left at your parent’s old home may not be valuable to anyone. If it’s more than you can haul to the dump on your own, call a junk disposal service. You can use earnings from the yard-sale to offset the cost. These services will even remove garbage and debris from in a home so that you can prepare to sell the house if that’s your family’s intention.
7. Decorating the New Apartment
In Joan Lunden’s book for caregivers “Chicken Soup for the Caregiver’s Soul” she describes furnishing and decorating her mother’s residence at her senior community such that its rooms looked just like rooms in her old home. This will really help ease the transition for your parent and is especially helpful for a parent with dementia.
Looking for an assisted living community for a parent or senior loved one? AssistedLiving.com has more than 200 Senior Living Advisors who have knowledge of assisted living communities in their area, and can send you a list of places that meet your family’s specific needs. Contact us to get started.
