When my mother in law died at the age of 97, my husband and his three siblings were faced with cleaning out the East-coast home where she had lived for more than 60 years.<\/p>\n
Last month, I talked about the challenges in getting the siblings to agree how to get the house sorted out, packed up and ready to sell \u2013 with a target date just a month away.<\/p>\n
By the end of Part 1, everyone had agreed on how they\u2019d do it. Here\u2019s what actually happened.<\/p>\n
Sorting it out\u00a0<\/strong> \u201cOne dot on something means it\u2019s yours. Two dots means we\u2019ll talk about it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then what?\u201d one asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t have imagined it was possible, but the sorting process went surprisingly smoothly. Everyone knew was they needed to do. They stayed focused, kept out of each other\u2019s way and got the job done.<\/p>\n I had actually expected most things would go unclaimed and that we would be able to identify a lot of stuff we could move out quickly.\u00a0Instead, only a very few things were left dot-free.<\/p>\n Even so, we were able to sort through and organize\u00a0items on the first floor, the second floor and the attic in three sessions. (Three\u00a010-hour long<\/em>\u00a0sessions, but still…)<\/p>\n One\u00a0suggestion I made was critical in saving time and keeping the project on track:\u00a0 There would be no going through any memorabilia. Anything related to family history — photos, letters, etc -\u2013 would get boxed and taken to the summer house in Maine, where it could be viewed at leisure. I was expecting push-back on that one, but amazingly, everyone agreed.<\/p>\n After everything was sorted through, there were (thankfully) only a handful of items that were in contention.<\/p>\n \u201cNow what? How do we decide who gets what?\u201d they asked.<\/p>\n I suggested each of them\u00a0give me a \u201cMost Wanted\u201d list, ranking things in order of importance. I nominated myself arbitrator to decide who would get what.\u00a0In the end, no one got everything they wanted, but everybody got something. And everyone seemed to be OK with the way it went.<\/p>\n Letting it go\u00a0<\/strong> I gave each person an area of operations to manage. One person was Sales Coordinator, dealing with the auction house. Another was Manager\u00a0of Charitable Donations. We also had the Trash Master who had to manage dumpster space, and the Move Coordinator who interfaced with the realtor. Each sibling found a way to do their part the way it worked best for them.<\/p>\n I might have done a few things differently, but I didn\u2019t want to overstep my bounds.\u00a0Plus, I had to do something I would never do in my professional life: I had to leave in the middle of the job. It was time for me to go back to California.<\/p>\n By this time they realized that they actually did need a Senior Move Manager\u2019s help, so I\u00a0found a colleague in the area. After I left she stepped in to guide them through the packing, and then choosing and working with the movers.<\/p>\n Everything was going swimmingly, and on schedule.<\/p>\n And then…<\/strong> Hooking up the house was a set-back, but a manageable one.\u00a0Less than two months after we started, the house was staged and put up for sale. On August 23rd<\/sup>\u00a0the realtor sent us the announcement.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t believe we got it all done!\u201d one of the sibs wrote to me. That would have been a lovely end to the story. But it isn’t.<\/p>\n Homecoming\u00a0<\/strong> “Can you\u00a0come help me?” she wanted to know.<\/p>\n So a week after downsizing in Massachusetts I was driving\u00a0down to pack up my daughter in\u00a0Los Angeles. I arrived on Tuesday. We packed everything in her 1BR\/1BA apartment on Wednesday, moved on Thursday, started unpacking on Friday and had her new apartment\u00a0set up by Saturday.<\/p>\n On Sunday, I arrived home, and found the\u00a0shipment of the things my husband had sent from\u00a0his\u00a0<\/em>mother\u2019s house.<\/p>\n “Where are we going to put all of this?” I asked him.<\/p>\n Now I was in the position of having to let go of a couple of my favorite pieces of \u201cbrown\u201d furniture.\u00a0The beloved farm cabinet from my father\u2019s home in northern Sweden, and my husband\u2019s beautifully worn slant-front desk from New England would have to find somewhere else to live.<\/p>\n I wasn’t happy.<\/p>\n Wrap Up\u00a0<\/strong> My daughter is enjoying her new job and her new digs.<\/p>\n And the cabinet and desk we don’t have room for\u00a0are\u00a0sitting in the middle of my living room. I’m just not quite\u00a0ready to let them go.<\/p>\n Clients are always saying it to me, but now I really understand what they mean. It\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>different when it\u2019s yours.\u00a0And even though I\u2019m a Senior Move Manager \u2013 that\u2019s not any different for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my mother in law died at the age of 97, my husband and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","tag-lettinggo-movingon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthemovenow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI assigned each of the four siblings a part of the house to sort through and organize into categories so everyone could see what was hidden in closets, cabinets, and drawers. I gave them a color and a corresponding package of sticky dots to use in identifying things they were interested in keeping.<\/p>\n
\nWe were making great progress but there was still a lot to do before we got\u00a0everything where it needed to go.<\/p>\n
\nIn downsizing,\u00a0the only thing you can expect is the unexpected. In this case, the unexpected came in the form of a sewer inspection. The septic tank for the 100-year-old house didn\u2019t pass muster. The choices were to\u00a0either get a new\u00a0septic tank or hook up the house to the town’s public sewer line.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe couldn\u2019t have done it without you!”<\/p>\n
\nWhen I came home, my daughter announced that she had gotten a new job and, you guessed it, had to move.<\/p>\n
\nToday, almost everything is where it should be. My\u00a0mother-in-law\u2019s house is in contract to be sold.<\/p>\n