There may quickly come a time in which your elderly family member needs to move from her home to a smaller place, or even to your home. That means doing some downsizing and that can get complicated.
Is Your Senior Okay with This Project?
When it comes to downsizing her home, your senior might have come up with the idea or it might be one that’s more of an urgent situation. Regardless of where it originated, your senior needs to be on board with what’s happening. If she’s not, this is going to be far more difficult than you might have anticipated. Talk about why it’s happening and make sure she’s alright with proceeding.
Get Ready for the Project
Before you really get rolling, there’s some preparation you’ll need to do. Depending on how much your senior is downsizing, she may need boxes or bags to either throw away or otherwise contain items. It might also be a good idea to line up disposal services, like an on-site dumpster, if you already know you’ll have to throw a lot of things away.
Pick a Time to Start Sorting and Tagging Items
The next task is to get started with sorting and tagging all of the different items that need to be downsized. Make sure that you have a safe spot set aside for the items that your elderly family member will be keeping. It’s also important to keep the ultimate schedule in mind. If the move is fast approaching, you need to be able to have as much done as possible.
Keep Your Senior Involved if at All Possible
You might be able to do this a lot more quickly without your senior, but these are her things. If it’s at all possible to keep her involved and to give her as much choice as possible with this entire project, do so. She may at some point give you her permission to take over and to do what needs to be done as long as you stick to some guidelines she gives you. Do your best to honor those requests, because there’s a lot of trust involved there.
After the move it might be a good idea for your senior to have some help maintaining her new home. Home care providers can take over those tasks and help her to conserve her energy for what she really needs to be doing.