When you have elderly parents who live far away there is a laundry-list of challenges you face in regards to monitoring and coordinating their day-to-day care.
But perhaps one of the biggest projects you may need to undertake is moving your parents into a new household. As difficult as it is place a loved one in a nursing home, the reality is that they really can't take much with them due to the storage constraints in skilled nursing facilities. The logistics get much more challenging when your loved one is moving to a new household and they actually can take most of their stuff with them. It's a dizzying project when you live next door, but close to impossible for you to undertake if you live far away. And it's usually not practical for an elderly couple to tackle this kind of project on their own.
Luckily, there is an emerging "moving management" cottage industry that is designed to help out in these situations. Click here for a Washington Post article on this relatively new industry.
A couple of years ago, I was appointed as conservator for an elderly lady and one of the first issues to address was moving her from her apartment to an assisted living facility where she could have more supervision. I ended up using a moving manager who retained the services of a moving company, spent time with my client and determined which items were going to the new home, physically moved everything to the new space on moving day (while a family friend took my client out for half a day), unpacked everything in such a way that it resembled the original home layout as much as possible, walked my client through her new home and pointed out where everything was, and then attended to all of the items that could not fit in the apartment by obtaining the services of an auction company and donating everything that could not be auctioned off.
The luxury of leaving all of the mind-numbing details of this moving project to someone else was a relief beyond words. I simply don't know how I could have managed everything on my own.
So, if you find yourself in this kind of situation with a loved one and he/she lives in the Hartford area then please e-mail me and I will be happy to refer you to a good local moving manager. If you're not in the area then try Googling "moving managers" or "organizing services".
