Elderly Care: Moving Elderly Parents to a New House

If you have come to the point where you have to move your parent or parents to an apartment from a house, this surely might prove to be a daunting task to some. Over the years, most people tend to accumulate so many things that when it comes to shrinking it down to fit into a smaller place, it is hard to decide what to keep and what to discard or give away.

The following are some tips to help in making this transition a little more stress free and clutter free in the process.

The first thing you must do is take inventory of all of your parent’s property. Sit down with your parent and try to help them decide what it is they just cannot live without, and what can be sacrificed. This might be difficult if you have a parent that happens to be a pack rat. There are also ways around this as well. If you come across something that you think your parent has no need or use for, or should not be sentimentally attached to it for any reason, and your parent disagrees with you, there is a simple solution. You can discard the item when they aren’t looking. Take the approach like you would on the times when you have had to clean your child’s bedroom. All parents have been there at some point and time. And Some ‘things’ are just that, ‘things’. There are definite items that are not just ‘things’ and it is important for you to know the difference.

Whatever you all agree to discard, if it is worth much or could possibly worth anything to anyone else, a yard sale is a good way to get rid of the stuff. Whatever does not sell can be donated to places such as the Salvation Army, they take anything, whether it makes sense or not.

Wherever they are moving, they are going to be making this place their home and it should speak for their personality as well. So once you get them moved and unpacked, decorating the new place to add their own style and uniqueness will help them get acclimated faster to their new home.

You will want to focus on the belongings that mean the most to them and decorate the apartment in such a way that it will accentuate the center pieces of their personality.

Once you get to that point, you will be able to look back and see that the clearing of clutter helped make the process so much more of a smooth and easier transition for your parent.

As with any new residence, everyone loves house warming gifts. After you have helped decorate the place, you can take mental notes on some accessories that might look good to add accent to those center pieces of their life as well. This is a great extra step in showing how much you care, and it is also a comforting feeling for your parent. It says to them, “everything is going to be okay, because my child will always be there for me”.