Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 14: “Your Parent’s Belonging What to Do With It All”
Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 14 “Your Parent’s Belonging: What to Do With It All” on Apple Podcasts
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Ryan McEniff:
Hello everybody. And welcome to The Caregiver’s Toolbox podcast, tools to help you with everyday caregiving. My name is Ryan McEniff the owner of Minute Women Home Care. And today’s episode is about what to do with your parents’ belongings. Good day, everybody and welcome to The Caregiver’s Toolbox, tools for everyday caregiver. Where we give you tips, education and information related to the senior care services. This podcast is brought to you by Minute Women Home Care. And today we’re going to be speaking about what to do with mother’s stuff. And as always, I am joined by Janet, how are you Janet?
Janet:
I’m doing well. It’s March, they came in like a lion, but spring’s on the way.
Ryan McEniff:
Always a good thing, even though today’s a little cold, but hopefully the weather improves. So today, as I mentioned, we’re going to be talking about what to do with mother’s stuff. And this is always interesting because in today’s age, there’s… Everybody has a lot of stuff. So if somebody’s downsizing or somebody’s passing away, what do we do with a house full of things that are near and dear to our parents’ heart, but maybe aren’t as near and dear to our heart? So let’s get started with the first topic. What do you do with this? Do you sell it? Do you give it away? What do you think needs to be done?
Janet:
Well, I think it, it depends on the situations. We have the same problem with our own possessions. You go in the garage and say, “What do I keep? What do I give away?” And I think that when it’s left to siblings to deal with this, especially if someone’s out of town, you need to have a plan before you get to mom’s door. And you have to decide if you’re clearing out the house and you’re going to give things to family members, whether you’re just cleaning it all out and tossing it. A lot depends on the relationship that you have with your or your sister may have a different relationship. So you have to have some rules of the road before you even go through the front door or you’ll drive each other crazy.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. This is not something you want to just wing it.
Janet:
No, not exactly.
Ryan McEniff:
Let’s just get the dumpster and figure out what to throw out and keep as we go along with it.
Janet:
Exactly.
Ryan McEniff:
So with those decisions, how do you go about deciding whether to move on from something, whether do to keep it? The yes, the no, the maybes. How do you go about doing that?
Janet:
Well, I think there’s generally two schools of thought. There’s the group of people that have that method of you touch it once, put it somewhere and move on. And then there’s the one that wants the yes, the maybe, the keep piles. And you have to agree to compromise because you’re going to be tired going through this. And sometimes you can each do your own thing and you do your, “I’m going to keep this, toss this, keep this, toss this.” And then just leave it and let your other family member do their method so that you get it down to a smaller pile of questionable things. Oftentimes the biggest issues are major items like the car in the garage. And first of all, you have to know who has the title and where is it? But oftentimes a car’s going to be given to a teenager in the family.
Maybe there’s more than one teenager. So you have to agree to compromise and you don’t want to be negotiating everything. So that’s what you do with the big items. And going through and planning if you think you’re going to do it in a day, it’s not going to happen. You could go in guns blaring, and everybody’s got their caffeine and by lunchtime, it just looks like a big mess. So you really need to plan some time. Maybe you need a couple of weekends, you’re going to get so much done one weekend and so much another. And if your mom’s in a nursing home or an assisted living, there may be some things that you want to see if she could have at the facility. And that really should be the first thing, because that’s now her new home.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And like you said to emphasize that it’s not something that’s going to happen in one weekend. It’s a progress and it happens in stages. And just like you said earlier, you might need to start with the definitely keep, maybe keep and throw out pile. And if you can get through the whole house and go through just those three areas, you might be getting rid of one third of what’s in the house and that’s a huge win just in and of itself. And then you have to decide what’s a keep and what’s a maybe.
Janet:
Yeah, absolutely. You need to see progress or you’re going to get bogged down. And one thing that people like, “What do I start with?” And you say, “Oh, well, let’s start with something easy.” And you find, they go to papers and photo albums. That’s the last place you want to go because that’s tied to memories. Good, bad, and indifferent for everybody. My suggestion is you start with things like the kitchen and the bathroom and anything that’s disposable food, things like that. Just get rid of it. If you sit there and say, “Does anyone like olives or so-and-so likes capers.” You’re going to be cleaning out the fridge for a month, just get rid of it. And then going through clothes. And the best way to sort out clothes is you just go in the room. And in my opinion, you take stuff out of the drawers.
And if it’s personal item, underwear, things like that, get rid of it. If it’s things that… And then you have good versus worn out and break it down that way. And that way, if you keep it to a system it’s not so personal and you get a whole lot further. And then maybe you’re down to furniture and those albums and photos and papers put those in a box and just save them for last. And that’s something you or other family members may even take home to sort out later. But at least you’ll have gotten the 80, 20 rule you would have gotten through most of it. And it won’t be so heartbreaking because that’s the home maybe you grew up in too.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And in actuality papers and photo albums are probably some of the smallest items that you’re going to be worrying about in the move out of a house. You’re talking maybe, I don’t know, two or three boxes worth of stuff out of a whole 1500, 2000 or bigger home that you have to go through.
Janet:
Yeah. And books can be the same way too. And sometimes nobody cares about the books and then they open a book and they say, “Oh, uncle Fred gave this to her for her birthday. Or there’s a nice inscription in it.” If you come across something like that, just put it in a pile and keep on going.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And I know that with myself and I’m not a sentimental guy, so this is a lot easier for me than it is maybe for you or for other people. But every year, every six months I go through my own stuff and it might be something that people pick up and say, “Hey, maybe we start this process a little earlier than just trying to do it three weeks before mom moves into an assisted living facility.” But going with your mom, going with your dad and say, “Hey, what’s some of the stuff that we can get rid of right now that you know, that you just need somebody to be able to lift it up and bring it to the curb, to throw it out or bring it to donations?” Because I know every six months to a year in my own home, because I live in a condo.
So there isn’t a massive amount of storage space like you have with an attic or a basement or a garage. I go through and if it… Unless it’s seasonal items, if I haven’t used it in six months, I’m going to think long and hard. Whether I am going to use this thing in another six months and if not, let’s bring it to the dumper, bring it to the donation center and get it over with. That way there’s never, ever going to be a situation where it’s like, “I need to spend three weekends unloading all of my stuff because I do it every six months anyways, to make it easier.”
Janet:
I would like to borrow your brain. Because I have dog tags from the puppy I had in junior high saved as a memento. And those things just explode. And I know from personal experience, if you get enough things you say, “I put it in a box and I’ll deal with it later.” You have boxes that you’ve put away and you don’t even know what’s in them. And obviously you don’t need them, but when you open them there, you sit going through piece by piece. So I totally agree. I’ll borrow your brain and try and clear out my own stuff.
Ryan McEniff:
I know that when my parents… Or my grandparents passed away, my parents really made a point of saying, “Hey, maximum one or two items.” Big items like a furniture piece of item. Obviously small mementos is different, but we’re not taking one house and moving it into a house that’s already furnished. Let’s take one or two items from each of our family’s side. And we’ll incorporate that into the house somehow. And that seems to kind of a… I picked up on that. So when my dad passes away, I’m not interested in taking all his furniture. I want the one or two items that I know are him. And I’ll somehow incorporate that into my home. And then that’s the momento that you keep and you maybe pass on.
And I think most people will realize that if you have a small handful of items that are very important to you, that means a lot more than having 50,000 items that you say are important to you. Because they kind of lose their value as it goes down into the each generation. It just ends up being stuffed rather than being, this was the grandfather clock that’s been in the family for three generations. And it’s the only one that we have. So you better take care of it because if this goes, we’ve got nothing else. So it makes it a bit more important.
Janet:
And sometimes it’s the ugly stuff you hate that has the most value as far as money’s concerned. So sometimes it’s good. If you want to sell things on eBay or whatever. Have a friend that has no emotional attachment to this stuff whatsoever, that can help you get rid of those kinds of things that can really be helpful. And one trick, someone taught me that I thought was a great idea. If it’s a matter of everything in the room, just seems so personal, whatever, take some pictures and then put them in an album. Because then you have the memories, but you don’t have to figure out where you’re going to put the couch. You just remember sitting on it when you look at the picture.
Ryan McEniff:
And like we said earlier, a photo book of memories is a lot smaller than a couch or anything else that’s sentimental. And obviously if you have somebody in your life that maybe is a little bit more advanced with technology, you can take all of those pictures and it will take some time, but you can scan them into digital. You can digitize them so that you can put them on somebody’s phone or you can put them on somebody’s laptop and they can go through those pictures every single day. And it literally takes up zero room and just take some time to digitize them and upload them into the cloud. And then somebody… So I have aunts and uncles that are in their eighties that love having all their pictures online and available on their iPhone and their computer and wherever. And they have thousands of photos that they can go through. So that’s an option as well. Specifically with those phones.
Janet:
Yeah. That’s a great idea. And just like people do for… Now that you mentioned that weddings and things like that, they put things together and who’s the company Shutterfly or somebody you can even make like a coffee table book of some of those things. And they can even have that if they’re in a nursing home or wherever else. And it doesn’t take up any space, it fits on an airplane fits in a suitcase.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. With those options is I find that you can take a thousand photos. With now with digital cameras there’s no film to worry about anymore. And one or two of those photos are probably only going to be worthy of putting into a frame anyways. So you can pick and choose which ones you can pick the best of the best. And then you can put them on the wall somewhere or whatever it might be. And then the rest of them can be on the computer somewhere and do that. But it’s going to be interesting because I was mentioning this to you before we press the record button. I was just reading an article yesterday on… I forget where, but I’ll link it on the podcast, in the comment section, but it was all about how nobody wants their parents items anymore. Because it’s just too much stuff we live in a world of people are moving around so quickly.
And the Ikea world that we live in, where it’s so cheap to go out and get a bed or get a dresser or whatever furniture that people don’t want that old time stuff anymore, I guess. So it was an interesting article to see it from that perspective of, “Hey, I’m young and I know that you want me to have all this stuff, but I really just don’t care about it.”
Janet:
Yeah. And your elderly loved one, whatever the people from the war mentality where you saved everything, even folded up tinfoil. So you’ve got this huge world of you just might need it. So you got a house full of just might need it.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And nowadays we’re used to getting a new $500 phone every two years because we need to get the latest and greatest. And we know that they don’t last more than two years and we’re dealing with a generation that was saving everything because you never know when you needed it again. So it’s interesting how that changes everybody.
Janet:
Yep. It’s true.
Ryan McEniff:
Well, thank you, Janet. And we’ll wrap this podcast up of The Caregiver’s Toolbox. Thank you very much for listening. If you have comments or questions, you can reach us out on Twitter @mwhomecare. Thank you very much for listening. Our next podcast will be on Tuesday. Have a good day. Thank you for listening to The Caregiver’s Toolbox podcast. Which is brought to you by Minute Women Home Care services located in Lexington, Massachusetts. Call us at 1844 BESTCARE. If you have caregiving questions or needs. For comments regarding the podcast, find us on Twitter our handle is @mwhomecare. Thanks again and we look forward to hearing from you.