Downsizing: What worked best for you?

Groovy; When mom moved to Independent Living, she went first to a respite unit that was furnished. When she decided that she was going to stay, we moved a couple of pieces of her furniture and some clothes into the new unit. Everything else, my sil and brother purchased (on her dime of course) from Bob's. Stuff that fit into the rooms. Because rooms in apartments tend to be smaller than rooms in houses.

I cleared out mom's house (lived in from 1956-2011) in an epic purge over my Department of Education summer break (June-Aug). Took most of the housewares to Goodwill; saved the good stainless and silverplate for my kids, told everyone to come and take what they wanted.

Called the Salvation Army and had them take the rest of the furniture. Then Brother called JunkLuggers or one of those services.

Then, there was the garage (Daddy's realm). Took my brother 3 years to clear that out (lots of hazardous waste stuff--DDT, asbestos based stuff). My father never met a chemical he didn't want to save.

I cleared out 50 years of tax returns, old greeting cards, unused toasters and blenders. I put loads of stuff at the curb and was gratified by the folks who came by and walked away looking happy that they'd found a treasure. It meant that what mom loved was going to be loved by someone else.

In your shoes, needing to do a quick sale, I would have movers take EVERYTHING to storage and purge it, without mom's "help" over the course of a month or two. If you are ruthless, go every weekend for a couple of weeks, you can get this done.

DO NOT put this stuff in front of your mom to choose from. That way lies madness.

I moved my dad from a 4 bedroom 3 story house with attic and basement into a 1 bedroom assisted living apartment. I didn't ask him to go through his things with the idea of what needed to downsize; I approached it to how did he want to decorate his new apartment. Then we moved those things, decorated the apartment, moved his personal items and then I attacked the house. We only kept family photos, a couple of boxes of keepsakes, and financial paperwork. All furniture, housewares, china, etc were disposed of - donate, sell, trash. Once it's out of sight it is generally quickly out of mind. Sometimes he'll ask about something he remembers I I just say "Oh, that's in a box in my downstairs closet." or "I know it's in one of the boxes in the attic." even if you know you got rid of it. He rarely asks again as it seems to be a random thought and he doesn't really want it; he just wants reassurance.

If you ask them to go through their things with the idea of getting rid of them it is heartbreaking so try not to do that so explicitly. Just get moved into the new place and take over doing it disposals yourself. And occassional little white lies will help.

My mom was already in a rented 2 bedroom house when she had to move out pretty quickly. She was loathe to get rid of ANYTHING and was horrified that my siblings and I were throwing out things like old wrapping paper and bags etc. She begged us to store it in a storage place and then she moved in with different family members for 6 years and then to an adult home. Occasionally, she would ask where something was and we would tell her we would get it from storage and then she never asked about it again.

We stored those things for 7 YEARS without ever going near the storage unit again. There was a huge bill of about $6,000.00 dollars when she died this September which came out of our inheritance. What a waste! We got all the family and grandkids together to help clean it out in a month but everyone took very little; they are all well established already. It was such a hassle to do right after she died because I had to go running all over to get anything disposed of. After Covid most businesses (SalvationArmy, Goodwill) were no longer picking up donations and we had to make arrangements with a place for homeless women with much aggravation from me since I was 1 hr. away from the storage unit and had to keep going there so people could pick up things.

Never again!!! Do not store things in a unit as your mom will probably never need them again. The only good that came out of this is I am making sure I don't leave my kids with the same mess.

You’re moving her to a larger apartment just to have to do this again to a smaller one later? As you’ll soon know first hand, moving her once is the preferred choice. My mom wanted a two bedroom. Nope. She couldn’t afford a two bedroom and it wouldn’t change anything - it would just prolong the suffering for all involved!

with memory issues already apparent, sounds like you’ll be moving her from IL to assisted living and then to memory care. Why?!

my sister did the approach of letting mom look at each item and decide. Torture for my mother and all of us that had to hear her dramatics around it.

storage is a bad idea. My mother is paying for a climate controlled storage closet my sister filled with nonsense that will never be needed again. Eventually one of us will have to go and get rid of the junk out of it.

this isn’t the time for a memory impaired person to make decisions that will impact you.

out of sight is real. She won’t remember what all she had and even if she did - so what? Rip the bandaid. Don’t prolong suffering for you both.

You are not helping your mother with these steps .. the temporary larger apartment will make her angry when she has to move to a smaller one. The small temporary storage you know she doesn’t need .. she gets to be angry once when you rip the bandaid … or many times as she continues to have to step down .. ultimately, the question is, why are you doing this to yourself? She won’t remember. You will.

Just a question, why does Mom need a 2 bed 2 bath apt?

I think I would like to move there - really nice find!

We made all the decisions for the folks. Named a week all of the siblings were available and told them this was the only chance to get what they wanted while helping us move the essentials. The staff had suggested we furnish rooms "lightly" for future wheelchairs, etc. Everything not taken was donated that week or tossed. Their community garbage service brought a large dumpster and would change it out for a new one when we called. I think we did 3 dumpsters of stuff. The neighbors who had been so kind to them were also invited to select furniture and belongings.

The older relatives were a little shocked. The three kids all lived out of state, we sold the house within 3 weeks of the clean out.

Latest update: Wow -- 46 responses! I'm so grateful to have so much experience and so many ideas to draw upon, here. Thank you all.

The approach we decided to take is sort of in 3 steps: 1) Furniture (only), 2) items required for daily living, i.e. toiletries, a small number of dishes, the clothes she wears most often, etc., and 3) true treasures and important papers.

Yesterday, we moved furniture (only) to the new apartment. Over the next few days we will move the items required for daily living. She will spend her first night in the new place on the 1st.

Mom has been so wonderful about this, and yesterday truly was a good day for all of us. My husband and I were able to simply move the furniture that was to go to the apartment to the front room of the house. My husband put a yellow stickie with the apartment room each piece needed to go to on every piece of furniture to be moved. This prevented any situations where the movers needed to ask Mom (or any of us) if something else was supposed to go. It also greatly reduced the cost of the move, since it saved so much time!

Mom has also agreed to allow my husband to focus on all the things that will go to an estate / garage sale vs. those that will either be donated or (mostly) taken to the dump.

Step 3 has the greatest potential to cause distress, but we hope to focus on that after Mom moves to her new place.

Finally, I wanted to add something: even though Mom's decision making ability and short term memory are compromised she does have a lot of personal insight into her problem. As I, also, have gained more empathy and have been working hard to remember to listen and to step back and take a break if I start to get frustrated, our communication and mutual trust has grown. Yesterday, she told me that having the furniture moved and knowing that progress is finally being made on the horde these issues have grown up around is a huge relief to her.

It has taken me all these years to finally realize just how disturbing, sad and incredibly frustrating it has been for my Mom to find herself unable to make simple choices or to maintain focus in her life. My anxiety and frustration, combined with my father's verbal abuse and decline, really left her backed in to an isolated corner with no advocate who had any real willingness to understand what has been happening to her.

We have so much hope for my Mom's happiness going forward. I think we all know the dementia will continue to get worse (the stress of moving may speed that up, despite the relief it feels to her) -- but there can be happiness and ease despite that if we can make enough physical and emotional space for it. We're on our way. I'll let you know how it goes.

When we downsized mom and dad from a 3,000sf home to an 800sf apartment, it took us 3 YEARS. Yup, YEARS.

If I had to do it again--and I sure hope not--I would probably not be so 'kind' about it. Mom looked at everything with such a sense of ownership and longing. Realistically, they could have put everything in storage and then paid those enormous storage fees for the rest of their lives, b/c they just WANTED all their stuff. But, why?

We did finally get to the stage where we just gave mom choices: How many 9x13 pans do you really need? 10 (that you have) or 1? She had a very hard time making decisions! We ended up, at the end, just making one sided decisions and she 'lost' a lot of things that she wanted.

Dad really didn't care. He was losing the house he'd built and there was no getting around that. (OB 'borrowed' the equity in their home and lost it in a bad business deal. That's why mom and dad had to sell and move. Heartbreaking.)

We did have to get 'brutal' about some things and to this day I feel badly about it. But mom could not make decisions, and was frozen in place.

SO MUCH was junk. Not to be rude, just saying. JUNK. And she saved everything, every bank statement for the past 42 years, every card, everything. That was the stuff that was hard to get her to let loose.

I let this memory of how awful it was to pack and move mom & dad guide me as I am still purging my 'new to us' house of stuff we brought here that we do not need. I try to toss 1-2 garbage bags of stuff per week. And take one box/bag to GoodWill per month. Or more. I have a lot of closets and many of them are completely empty. It's a good feeling!

I'm finding that the older I get, the less I want all this 'stuff' around me.

After mom passed, YB went a little crazy and had mom's apt completely emptied in 48 hrs. It caused some ruffled feathers, as he didn't do it with an eye to what had been 'promised' to various family members--he just wanted it EMPTY. It was his way of mourning mom, and of erasing 25 years of non-stop caregiving.

That's one way to do it, but I gurantee it will cause some hurt feelings. I don't think YS has spoken to him since the funeral. Luckily, I didn't want ANYTHING from her house, so I didn't care, just felt sorry for YB and his frantic purging.

IMHO, there is NO one way to do this without there being a lot of emotions involved. Good and bad. Prepare for some anger, sorrow and sadness.

When we moved our step-father & wife into AL, we made the decisions and did all the packing, if we had not, we would still be there waiting for them.

Same with my mother, she made some furniture choices we did the rest. Moved her first then cleaned out the house and put it up for sale.

Each time we completed the job in a week, put the houses up for sale, have done this several times, my brother & I operate like machines.

I must admit I do not understand the moving her into a large apartment, to do this all over again, why not just move her into AL and be done with it? Find a place that has a step up program if she should need MC in the future. What does she need 2 bedrooms for? Visitors can stay in a motel.

Dear Groovygal,
The hubs and I moved my parents into assisted living.
Cleaning out the house was quite a big project. I would loathe to have to do it again. There was a lot of stuff accumulated over 60 years. For example, there was over 300 glasses for every beverage
imaginable. The Hubs and I chose to tackle the project head on with no storage unit. We felt that it was just an avoidance tactic. I also let my parents and sibling know that my house was not a storage option. We would not allow our home and garage to be filled to the brim waiting for my parents to make decisions on who got what.
As you can imagine this did not go over very well with them. It was a very stressful time and if I had to do it again I would probably just let my parents put their stuff in storage knowing it would sit forever and I would make sure that my sibling who lives out of state be the contact for whatever needs to be done and wash my hands of the matter. I learned a lot of things about my family during this time and most of them were very interested in my parents possessions and not my parents, even though they sat at their holiday table for over 50 years.