Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
Being a “baby boomer” with aging parents (we don’t use the “O” word) is a challenge. Someone has to manage their finances, medical care, etc., in addition to managing their own lives. Some people transition into this next phase easily, while others may struggle. My mother-in-law blossomed when she moved into a continuing care community. All the people, the activities, and the fine meals prepared there… visiting her seemed like geriatric camp.
The beginning
The ideal situation is when parents make the decision to plan ahead, before something “happens.” They will have a say on how things will unfold and won’t be feeling left stuck. Communication is key. Remember, this is a huge life change for them so check your ego at the door. If you can’t communicate, get a mediator to help you through the process.
What if they don’t want to move?
The longer our parents wait or the more they postpone the process, the harder it will be. Period. As children, we can be a blessing and a curse. They want us there, but they don’t want our opinions. Personally, I was not invited to help my mother when she downsized. It was emotional and difficult to understand. I, the expert, was banned from doing what I do best.
Avoid crisis
Don’t wait for a crisis to happen; being prepared for every scenario is key. Think about the worst case and consider all the events that will follow: transportation, after care, meal preparation, hygiene and so on. These are all possible circumstances that will need to be addressed after a crisis. Once you are in the crisis, things move very quickly. This can be very disorienting and stressful for your parents (and you too).
Where to go?
Transition is hard for everyone. Finding the right place will give your loved ones peace of mind and security. A member of my family couldn’t return home and moved to a facility that was chosen by their kids. It was ok, but the quality of care quickly declined. This resulted in moving an 85-year-old with Parkinson’s twice within a few years. Very disorienting.
How a facility is managed can tell you a lot. For my mother, we opted for a place that is managed by the community or a residents board of directors.
What about the stuff? Where do you start with a lifetime of possessions?
Start as soon as possible. What does that mean? As soon as your parents start warming up to the idea of moving, talking about moving, or looking at new places, begin to sort.
Implement deadlines. Set a goal of when decisions need to be made, and if the deadline passes, the stuff goes into the trash or a donation bin. Start in the attic, basement or garage. The big things are easy (we call this cherry picking)— extra furniture, appliances, or things they no longer use. Then shift into the smaller items, like things they will no longer need in their new place: bikes, shovels, tools, etc., can all go…
Excess items are easy to let go. In a small space, you will only need so many household goods. Entertainment items can be paired down to just the basics.
Kids, our parents are not responsible for our stuff from high school and college. Help them make the decision to let go of your old things.
Emotional items are more difficult. It’s ok to leave those to the end. Pick your battles and make realistic decisions. Small stuff is good, but the bigger stuff might be more difficult. Find a balance.
To store or not to store?
The storage decision is hard. Be realistic on what you need to store. I have a client who has spent $50K on storage since her dad died. I am sure that what is in there is not worth the storage cost.
The only time I recommend storage is if there is no way you can get your parents to change their minds. Have the hard conversation, but know that sometimes it’s not worth the battle.
If it’s a non-negotiable decision, respect your parent’s choice. It’s okay to revisit the conversation later. Suggest going through the unit in six months. They might feel better about making decisions once they have settled into the new space and relaxed.
My number one word of wisdom is— do not bring everything to your house to sort! Too many people have called me with a basement or a garage full of their parent’s things. My aunt died thirteen years ago, at the last minute we packed a couple of boxes to sort through at my mother’s house… they are still there.
This is a difficult time for everyone. We need to drive the process, learn to listen and be supportive while maintaining a good relationship with our parents.
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Each of my three children has their own photo albums that I have crafted for them over the years. In order to make these personalized keepsakes, I’ve adopted a simple photo organizing process. After taking photos with my smartphone, I always try to find some quiet time to delete the ones I dislike. About once a month, I then upload the “keepers” to my computer, edit them as needed and assign the photos to their appropriate folders, such as “2016 PHOTOS.” At the end of the year, I download my favorite photos onto a flash drive and take them to a photo processing center. Next, I place the hard-copy photos into each child’s temporary photo bin. Once sorted, I choose individual photo albums and begin filling them with memories. My oldest has about eight photo albums now and my youngest has about four. They will eventually take the albums with them to enjoy as adults.
Although this photo organizing system works for me now, I honestly don’t wish to continue making albums for my children as they enter adulthood or for the next generation. With the recent birth of my granddaughter, I have implemented a simpler system. Now, I upload photos from my smartphone to an online photo service, such as Snapfish, and create photo albums from there. It’s much easier to create an online album if my photos are already streamlined and sorted. For example, in my granddaughter’s album, her pictures are assigned to a folder with her name and date. With today’s technology, creating beautiful keepsake albums is faster and easier than ever. It’s even possible to create albums directly from your smart phone with an app from Target.
If you find that you have a large assortment of photo prints, you can sort the photos using acid free photo boxes, or you can use shoe boxes, temporarily. For a recent client, we labeled her shoe boxes as “Travel,” “Nature,” and the names of her children. In her case, she decided to pass the photo boxes on to her children and skip the albums altogether. Other clients prefer to scan the photos, save them virtually and eventually create albums from their computers.
Photo organizing can be overwhelming when you have hundreds of photos stored all over the house. When working with my clients, I’ve found that once they get started, the memories come back, they start smiling, and a sense of peace comes over them. They know that their most treasured memories are safe and can be enjoyed by generations to come.
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I read an interview with Michael Jensen, Emeritus of Harvard Business School entitled, “Integrity: Without It, Nothing Works,” a bold title, that peaked my interest. He really made me see that if I got in sync with the “Law of Integrity,” I could tackle those areas in my life — where I feel stuck — with greater ease. I could create workability where it is lacking and increase my productivity and performance tenfold just with a little practice.
Before I read the interview, the word integrity, made me think of “integrity” as a virtue; it is good to have integrity and it’s bad not to. The article helped me see that being caught up in the good / bad, right / wrong characteristics of integrity hides its relationship to workability and performance. Jensen makes the case that “as integrity declines, workability declines, and when workability declines the opportunity for performance declines” as well. He calls it the Law of Integrity.
Think of the spokes on a bicycle. If I remove spokes from the wheel, the integrity of the bike is increasingly diminished with each spoke I remove. As the integrity is more and more dimished, the wheel becomes less and less workable: its performance is ultimately compromised.
Jensen gives an example of how things that lack integrity affect our lives. Think of your car. When you don’t manage its maintenance, parts of the car can begin to wear out, run less efficiently, or break. The car becomes unreliable which makes you late for work, late for meetings, maybe even late to pick up your child at school. The “out-of-integrity” of your car creates a lack of integrity in your life that produces all kinds of fallout. Over time, you begin to show up as unpredictable, unreliable and untrustworthy, to your work associates, family members, and yourself.
The effects of the “out-in-integrity” behavior in our lives mostly go misidentified, unnoticed, and unacknowledged by us and others. We could simply say, the issue is with the car. However, if we look at integrity as defined in the article as “a state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound and in perfect condition,” then the condition of my car directly provides “actionable access” that leads to opportunities for workability that enhance my ability to perform in life. With this model of integrity, the breakdown with my car illuminates the pathway or actionable steps I can take to create, maintain and restore integrity. This, in turn, gives me direct access to maximum performance in all areas of my life.
Fundamental to the Law of Integrity is honoring your word with yourself and others. More specifically, it means:
If we faithfully manage our integrity with ourselves, with the groups we are involved with, and the organizations that are important to us, Jensen explains, over time, “it enriches the quality of one’s life.” Effectiveness, workability, and increased performance are all a by-product of this model of integrity. He says, “People fail to link the difficulties in their lives or in their organizations to out-of-integrity behavior. The increases in performance that are possible by focusing on integrity are huge.” In his own company, after three years of implementing this Law of Integrity, Jensen saw a “300% increase in output, with essentially no increase in inputs.”
Michael Jensen makes a convincing case for integrity’s critical link to performance. Think about areas in our lives that don’t work (our homes, our work environments, our healthcare system, the financial industry, our political system). What would be possible if we, as individuals, in our society took on the “Law of Integrity” in those areas where we feel stuck, life feels unworkable and productivity needs a boost!
Wow, that would create a new future for all of us!
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Every time I enter a client’s home, I’m reminded of the sheer amount of stuff with which we surround ourselves. Does our stuff make our lives better or more difficult? And, what happens to all of the stuff we don’t want?
Most clients try to recycle as much as they can, but the truth is, much of what is donated ends up in the dump. Just this week, I was at a baby shower and the mother-to-be received so many gifts, she remarked they would need a storage unit. She wasn’t kidding.
April 22nd is Earth Day and a great opportunity to reflect on the world we would like to leave to our children and grandchildren. Take a look at the road sides as you drive around this month. Few places don’t have plastic bags blowing in the limbs of the trees and litter strewn about. While we need things to live, conduct business and improve our quality of life, do we want to leave a legacy of trash for the next generation?
Water bottles are a scourge on our earth and resources. According to Ban the Bottle, “Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.” The EPA estimates that 75% of the American waste stream is recyclable, but we only recycle about 30% of it and The Recycling Coalition of Utah states that “Americans represent 5% of the world’s population, but generate 30% of the world’s garbage.”
How can we stop burying ourselves and our loved ones in garbage?
Happy Earth Day!
Personal property is “in motion” when there is a need to deal with your movable personal possessions. Items include furnishings, art, antiques, jewelry, and collections — often referred to as “stuff.”
What puts Personal Property in Motion?
• Moving & down-sizing living space
• Selling a local home to move full-time to a vacation home
• Inheriting items when your home is already full
• Deciding to sell a personal collection
• Making a decorating/design change or upgrade
• Getting organized to deal with stuff which has accumulated over the years
• Settling an estate
Suggestions for dealing with emotions when Property is in Motion
• Pictures can help retain the memory of items. Remembering special rooms, spaces, items, and collections through picture albums can help minimize the sense of loss. The pictures, when stored and retrieved electronically, take up no physical space.
• Providing family and friends with the opportunity to acquire items helps in many cases. Passing along sentimental items, in this way, often feels good.
• Recognize it is now normal when family and friends are not interested in many of your furnishings and treasures. Unfortunately, I see this in the majority of people I have worked with in recent years. It helps to not take it personally. When this happens, it is time to sell, donate, or dispose.
Identifying and selling valuable personal property:
• Unfortunately, what you or your family paid for items does not matter to buyers.
• The buyers are generally significantly younger than the sellers. Current market value is driven by what buyers demand.
• When you look to sell valuables directly to a buyer, knowing the current market value is helpful in setting and negotiating a fair price.
• Auctions are an efficient way to deal with significant amounts of personal property in motion efficiently; there are auctions available at every level.
• Higher-end auction houses are an efficient resource in identifying valuable items and their market value; there is generally no charge for this service.
• When selling valuables at auction, it is important to use an auction house which regularly offers similar items. They will have established clientele and attract strong bidders.
Very often, a handful of the most valuable personal property items are worth as much as everything else (you’d hoped to sell) combined. When this happens, half of the financial work in handling the property in motion is complete, simply by identifying and selling the most valuable items.
The process of dealing with property “in motion” brings out emotion. There are memories attached to belongings which connect us to our family, friends, and occasions throughout our lives. While the process may have emotional ups and downs, it feels good when it is complete. I wish you well.
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“How can I make my parents organize their papers? They gave me power of attorney and named me as executor, but I don’t know where anything is.” I receive phone calls like this several times each year. The caller is usually fearful, frustrated, and worried about the state of the parents’ affairs.
Each time I hear this question, or one like it, I’m reminded of the old lightbulb joke:
Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.
The same is true for a disorganized loved one – they have to want to change their situation. But even though we can’t make them change, there are a few things we can do to pave the way for them to request help.
First, a few things to remember:
In short, your parents likely feel some level of embarrassment or vulnerability. To be successful, you will need to be sensitive to their discomfort, and respect their pace. Here is the sequence I recommend to clients who are preparing to assume their parents’ affairs:
It might take a few iterations to build some momentum with your parent. The key is to respect your parent’s preferred pace. In time, your parent may trust you enough to delegate work to you, or let you hire a professional organizer.
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