The 10 Truths of Moving

There may be a nugget of wisdom here that helps you or someone you love make the leap into downsizing into senior housing.

1. Moving is the least painful when the person moving sees a benefit to moving: focus on the gain, not on the loss.
2. Moving is a huge change: Adaptation to change is in direct proportion to the feeling of control that the person has over the change.
3. Most people want familiarity in the new place: it needs to look and feel like the home they left.
4. Everybody thinks they have a lot of stuff……except the people who really have a lot of stuff.
5. Everybody saves something that to other people seems useless, unnecessary, etc.
6. Senior men who are downsizing have different and greater challenges than women: they usually aren’t involved in hobbies and activities that easily move to smaller places, like sewing, knitting and cooking. Men are more often vested in the workroom, the garage and the completed projects around the house and garden. It’s harder for them to take what they love.
7. Most adult children do not want their parents’ stuff. (And the grandkids don’t want the stuff, either.)
8. Most seniors don’t have enough in their home for an estate sale after they move.
9. If you’ve lived in a house for long, you will probably need one dumpster for every 15 years that you’ve lived in the home. Maybe more.
10. The most economical way to empty a house, is often to donate what can be donated, recycle what you can, and throw away the rest of it.