Are you (or your parents) thinking about downsizing? There's help for that.

Boston Globe

3 days ago

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According to the Pew Research Center, Americans in their 40s are the most likely to be sandwiched between their children and an aging parent. More than half in this age group (54 percent) have a living parent age 65 or older and are either raising a child younger than 18 or have an adult child they helped financially in the past year.
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'It often takes 30 to 40 hours to downsize a house on average, and adult children do not have that time,' Hammond says. 'I watched my mother work tirelessly driving up and down I-95 trying to help her mother move, and it's often unpaid work of women in families.'
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Downsizable handles sorting, packing, junk removal — I'm flashing on a plaid couch in my parents' basement — donation coordination, unpacking, creating floor plans, and settling into the new space.
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'We also provide emotional support for people. We're finding really personal details out about people's lives. You're intimately involved with their possessions, in a way. We always joke, we wouldn't be on the second floor of each other's homes going through paperwork. We really get to know the person. And, for our clients, I think they really like having people to have company with, to talk to,' Anderson says.
Here's their free advice for how to help your parents respectfully, gradually, and hopefully happily.
Start small. Very small.
If your parents mention moving, your first instinct might be to summon your favorite real estate agent and bookmark listings on Zillow. Deep breath.
'Timelines for downsizing do not follow timelines of a typical move. Usually, when someone says, 'I'm thinking of downsizing, but I'm not quite ready,' that means they're really considering it. They just don't want to be hounded by vendors or real estate developers. They want to come to a full decision on their own. But a lot of times that means they actually are ready for the first step,' Hammond says.
This means decluttering a bedroom. Paring down a bathroom. Maybe getting your 1996 high school yearbook out of the basement. Baby steps.
On that note: Take your own stuff out of your parents' house. Finally.
'There's not one client who doesn't have boxes for their adult children to go through. When you're visiting your parents, you should ask them: 'What's the stuff that you want me to have?'' Anderson says.
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When a parent is finally ready to move, plan on one box of sentimental items per grown child, they say.
Encourage your parents to tell people that they're downsizing.
Think of this as a slow streamline. Friends and relatives could pop by to take things that they no longer have space for over an extended period, so it doesn't feel like a yard sale.
Consider donation partners.
'Research donation partners in your area, and also your town and city trash rules. You might be able to put some things curbside, but a lot of things you cannot: air-conditioning units, mattresses, box springs. All of those require special pickup, and every town and city is different,' Hammond says. 'If you have 10 or more items, typically big donation partners like Big Brothers, Big Sisters will come to your home and get them, if it's worth their trip.' (Note: Donation partners will often charge a pickup fee.)
Make peace with not making a profit on old furniture.
A gigantic mahogany grandfather clock? A dining room table from the 1940s? Gorgeous, and likely sturdier than your kids' IKEA bunk bed, but not a money-making proposition.
'Our clients are from a generation where they spent a lot of money on their furniture, and their furniture lasted them for a long time. But the amount of money they spent on their furniture is not the value of the furniture now. We try to gently remind people: If you've spent $5,000 on a dining room table and you use that dining room table for 30 years, you've gotten the value out of it,' Anderson says. 'There's some really big brown furniture, and the resale value is quite low, or really you're paying people to remove it.'
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Use special occasion items all the time.
'If you have beautiful items that you love, don't save them for special occasions. Being alive is a special enough occasion as it is. Celebrate; use the things you love. With so many clients, we are boxing up or donating items that have never even been opened,' Hammond says.
This also goes for wine: The duo say they often end up trashing unused bottles before a move. If your parents can still safely drink, encourage them to have some friends over.
'Drink the wine that you have. So often people save it for special occasions. If your friends come over for a casual Friday night pizza dinner, pop open the good bottle of wine, the bottle of champagne. Enjoy that stuff, because at some point, Blair and I will be painstakingly dumping it down the drain,' Anderson says.
Take your time.
Especially with sentimental items, it's hard to know whether to keep them or to offload.
'That's why the process goes much slower than a typical move. We're hearing stories, and on some days the person is overwhelmed with emotion and memory. We say, 'We're going to set this aside and we're going to come back tomorrow, and we'll resume our work,'' Hammond says.
Put piles aside. Revisit them. Your parents didn't accumulate a lifetime of sentimental objects in one day; don't force them to eliminate them in one day, either.
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Avoid storage
. Anderson and Hammond try to steer clients from expensive storage purgatory, because storing things indefinitely is really just a form of (costly) procrastination.
'We recommend that people do not put stuff in storage, because they never come out of storage. And what you're doing by putting them in storage is avoiding making a decision. It's just punting it for another day.'
Their rule: Use storage for three months maximum, while transitioning to a new space. Beyond that, sell or donate.
Plan early, before a fall or an illness forces the moving issue.
'This is personal to me: What I would wish people would talk about is making a plan of where they want to go next,' Anderson says. 'By not making a plan, you're inviting yourself to have to make a plan in some sort of emergent situation. The best clients that we've had — the most prepared ones — have said, 'I'm living in this house, then I'm going to sell the house. I'm going to move to a place of my own choosing, and I'm going to have full autonomy of the process. No one's going to tell me what to do.' And I think that those people are the most satisfied. They feel the most in control.'
And last but not least, I love this (nonprofessional, but important!) tip from my friend Rachel, who recently moved her dad from his longtime home in the suburbs to her house closer to the city.
'Go out of your way to create celebrations and opportunities for friends and family to see them in their new space. A move can be isolating. When my dad moved in with us to a town that was 20 minutes away from his previous home, we set up a series of dinners and teas for friends to come see him. He was so proud to show his new space in his new garden — and it gave them a chance to visit with him and stay connected.'
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Kara Baskin can be reached at