Gold Star Downsizing Decathlon
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Area 1 Agency on Aging, Gold Star Move Management Downsizing Decathlon Presentation
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Gold Star Downsizing Decathlon
- 1. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 Downsizing Decathlon Because rightsizing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon Gold Star Move Management Maggie Kraft, MSW, Area 1 Agency on Aging Member, National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM)
- 2. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 How to reduce stress 1. 2. • Proven recipe • Save money • Reach goals • Help sell the house • Reduce stress Top 10 Downsizing tips
- 3. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • 100 hours sorting • 20 hours selling, disposing, donating • 40-60 hours packing and unpacking • 50-120 cartons 1. Develop your move plan
- 4. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Set the stage for a quick sale • Determine work plan with buyers in mind 2. Think strategic
- 5. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Must be to scale • Remove guesswork and avoid costly, stress producing errors • Puts you in control • Your roadmap for all that follows 3. Create a floor plan
- 6. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 4. Work in chunks of time • Divide big tasks into smaller ones • Work 15 minutes per day
- 7. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • If you can pack it now and not need it until next year, you don’t really need it • Sorting in advance is the best way to make money from things you don’t need and move fewer items. 5. Sort, don’t pack
- 8. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Measure what you use now • Compare it to what you will have in the new home or office 6. Do reality checks
- 9. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Don’t be consumed by finding homes for things you don’t want/need • Adult children • Stop acquiring • Stick to a plan 7. Take Control
- 10. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • One day, two days, more? • Before house is sold, after? 8. Design YOUR move
- 11. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Perfect is the enemy of good • You may not accomplish all you had hoped to – it’s OK 9. Forgive yourself
- 12. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 10. Hire Gold Star Move Management Senior Move Managers – Professionals devoted to helping you with the emotional and physical aspects of relocation
- 13. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 • Develop a move plan, timeline and floor plan • Reorganize existing space. • Provide hands-on help for sorting, decluttering, selling and donating • Stage your home for a quick sale • Refer movers you can trust • Unpack your belongings at your new place Gold Star Move Management can…
- 14. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 Free initial consultation
- 15. www.a1aa.org ■ 707-442-3763 Gold Star Move Management Maggie Kraft, MSW 707-442-3763 Thank you
Editor's Notes
- Welcome and thank you for coming today. While much of what I will say today is about our personal lives and stuff, it applies to our work worlds as well.
- If someone gave you a proven recipe that was guaranteed to succeed, would you make up your own ingredients, or would you follow it? What I’ll be sharing with you today is a proven recipe. I promise you that if you follow these steps, you will save money on your move, help your house sell for the highest price and reduce stress as you prepare for your move. If you arent moving you will achieve a sense of calm and accomplishment when you have decluttered and reorganized your space for who you are today. This recipe for downsizing has ten ingredients, or steps. they don’t always need to be done in this sequence, they all need to be done. So here is the recipe.
- Step number one in baking is to gather your ingredients. Step number 1 in downsizing is to develop a move or reorganization plan --- a picture of everything you’ll need to accomplish to deal with your belongings and implement your move. You will need to sort through your belongings, identify what is going with you and find solutions for all the things not going with you. You’ll have to develop a floor plan, find movers you can trust, get packing supplies or find a way to have your belongings safely packed. recipes tell you at how much time it will take, so you know when to start. * 100 hours for sorting through and making decisions about your belongings. This means identifying and documenting what goes with you and what will go to other places and where. * 20 hours or more to sell, donate or dispose of items you don’t want. If you do all this, and you have all the right supplies, packing and unpacking will take about 40-60 hours, and you’ll probably have somewhere between 50-120 cartons. If this sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time, it is. You spent decades accumulating all your things; you didn’t accumulate them overnight, and it takes time to go through them and make decisions. knowing the big picture is a good thing. you know when to start. now.
- Step number two: think strategic. Chances are, your home is your biggest single asset, so you want to get the most you can when you sell it. How many people here have ever sold a car? What did you do to get your car ready to be sold? You removed anything personal, and cleaned it thoroughly inside and out. When you drove your car, you may have used a back pillow on the seat, kept CDs, electronics, tissues, a first aid kit and other things in the car. But in order to sell it, you removed all of that, so the only thing the buyer saw was the car itself. What about your house? Are you selling a used house, or a gently pre-owned domicile? Most people spend more time getting their car ready to be sold than they do their house! If you are willing to clean and declutter your car to get the most for it, it certainly makes sense to do as much for your house. The buyer of your home is likely to be 25-40. This is a generation that grew up on IKEA, Pottery Barn and Martha Stewart. When they look for a new home, they will go to the Internet and search. They will look at photos the realtor has posted on the Internet, and will make appointments to see those homes that appeal to them emotionally. In other words, your house has to appeal emotionally to this young buyer, not to you. So what does working strategically mean? It means doing first things first. If your realtor wants to list the house for sale in one month, focus on decluttering closets, bedrooms and rooms on the first floor. Don’t clean out the attic.Focus on the areas that will be in the photos, because its what will bring prospective buyers to your door. Once your house is on the market, then you attack the attic and garage.
- Step number three is to develop a scaled floor plan. A floor plan helps you visualize what you have and where it is likely to fit in your reorganization or new place. It’s important that the floor plan be drawn to scale. Floor plans drawn by hand indicate where you want your furniture to go, but not whether it will fit. A scaled floor plan removes the guesswork from moving and avoids costly and stress-producing mistakes. Determining scale and making sure that everything is consistent can be tricky. That’s why we use a scaled floor planning system. When we envision a move or reorganization, there is a hierarchy of how we approach it. Most of us need to have the big picture before we can focus on sorting through belongings. The floor plan provides that big picture, and then leads the way to other decisions. For example, let’s say you plan to take your china cabinet, but not the buffet. We may ask, “What about the 2 sets of dishes that are IN the buffet?” “Oh, I am taking them,” you may reply, and we’ll ask, “Where do you plan to put them since the buffet is not going?” What if your move is far in the future, or you don’t know where you will be moving. Can I still downsize and declutter? Absolutely, but for many people, the floor plan is the reality check that provides the incentive to let go.
- Step number four. Downsizing, preparing your house for sale and preparing to move doesn’t have to occupy every minute of your day. For many of you, your move is months, even years away. If you follow this downsizing recipe, you can get it done with 15 minutes per day. How? Break bigger tasks into smaller ones. Take a kitchen, for example. Sorting through your kitchen is a big job, but not if you break it down into 15 minute chunks. Sort thru your spices on one day, the next day, baking pans. A third day, coffee mugs and thermoses. Let’s take your spices. How many of you have spices in McCormicks tins? Other than pepper, McCormick hasn’t produced spices in tins since 1999! So if you have any spice tins, they are probably 14 years old! Here is another tip that takes no time at all to do, and is a great reality check. When you move your clothes for change of season, turn all the hangers in one direction. It doesn’t matter which direction, as long as they are all the same. The first time you wear something that season, turn the hanger the other direction when you hang it back up. At the end of the season what will you have learned? You’ll find out what you haven’t worn the whole season.
- Step number five. Sort, don’t pack. One of the first things people do when they decide to move is start packing. Why? Because packing a box is much more fun than sorting through your stuff. For many people, packing is way of avoiding decision-making. How many of you think you are moving in 2015? In 2016? In 2017 or beyond? If you can pack something now and not need it until you move, do you need it at all? Sometimes people say, “I have access to my new apartment/office before the move; I’ll save money by taking things over gradually.” I don’t recommend this. When things move little by little, it is hard to get a handle on how much you are really taking. The task that really needs to get done in advance is sorting. What happens when sorting is not done by pack day? It costs more, because you pay for moving even the things you end up not wanting or being able to use. Which clients have the lowest invoices when they move? The ones who have finished sorting.
- reality checks. Sometimes a client will say, “There is a huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom. All my clothes can fit there, plus a dresser, and I can put my file cabinet in the second bedroom closet.” A reality check is where you measure the space in your new home and compare it to how much space you’ll really need. For example, let’s say you have 20-linear feet of hanging space in your new apartment. We measure the linear feet of clothing in your current home. That includes the clothing in your master bedroom, in the second bedroom, in the third bedroom, the hall closet, the cedar closet, the attic and the basement. If your clothing takes up 30-linear feet, you’ll need every inch of the second bedroom closet for clothes, you won’t have room for a dresser in the closet and you may need to have rods double hung. Another area where reality checks are helpful is the storage bin or storage closet. “Oh, my suitcases and holiday decorations are going in the storage bin, and my file cabinets, and I’m having a rack built for out of season clothing.” Sometimes we measure the storage bin and put tape representing that size on the floor of your current home, so you can visualize how much the storage bin will be able to hold. Reality checks don’t necessarily provide bad news; they may demonstrate that your downsizing is on target. Reality checks minimize moving costs, avoid unpleasant surprises, and be in control.
- Step number seven is about taking control. How many of you are warehousing things that belong to your adult children? In our experience, adult children don’t respond to subtlety; it’s time to tell you children they need to take their things, now. One client found a solution; she put the cartons of things that belonged to her children in her car, drove to her children’s house and dropped them off while the children were at work. Be firm. Give your children a deadline, and stick to it. You have plenty of downsizing to do without having to deal with their belongings, as well. What about things you want to give your adult children? Sometimes they want the thing you offer them, and often they don’t. But what holds you up the most is that they don’t get back to you, or they decide, but don’t make plans to remove the items they have accepted. An auctioneer asks if you want to consign something, and you respond, “I don’t know, I am waiting for my kids to tell me whether they want it…” Once again, take control. Give your kids a deadline, so you can make plans and accomplish what you need to do.
- Step number eight - design YOUR move. There is no rule that you need to move one day and unpack the next, or that you need to sell your house before you can move. Vacant houses sell successfully every day. If the thought of getting your house ready to be listed overwhelms you, if you don’t want prospective buyers coming into your home while you are still living there, you can move first and then list your house. That approach may be easier for you. Instead of deciding what to do with everything in your home, you are simply deciding “new home” or “not new home.” After your move, you can return and deal with the things that are left. For many people, this approach is less stressful. I am not saying you should do this, I am simply saying you have choices. Design the move that works for you. Here is some other examples. Let’s say you take medications that cause you to be groggy in the morning. Then arrange your move-related activities to occur in the afternoon. If the thought of move day terrifies you and you would prefer to not be present at all, go on vacation during your move.
- Step number nine is to forgive yourself. On move day, you may put an empty soda can in the trash instead of in recycling. You recycle 364 days of the year. It’s not a crime to put a soda can in the trash. You will find great solutions for many of the items not going with you. There may be some you don’t get to, that end up being donated or discarded. It’s OK. Remember, that there is no such thing as “too good to donate.” Non-profit thrift stores support charities by selling items; the better their merchandise, the more they can contribute to the charities they support. As you downsize and prepare for your move, you will make hundreds of decisions, you will do a good job, and you may not accomplish all that you had hoped to. Forgive yourself. It’s OK.
- The tenth step is to hire Gold Star Move Management to help. We provide hands-on help, so you can be in control but not have the physical burdens associated with downsizing and moving. Most of all, we are objective professionals. Gold Star Move Management is insured and a member of the National Association of Senior Move Managers, or NASMM. This means we agree to abide by the NASMM Code of Ethics.
- We can: Develop a detailed move plan and timeline Develop a scaled floor plan Provide hands-on help for sorting and decluttering Provide resources for selling and donation Stage your home for a quick sale Refer movers you can trust unpack your belongings
- We charge by the hour. We provide a free, no-obligation consultation that is typically 1-2 hours long. You own your stuff; your stuff doesn’t own you. Please don’t let the thought of dealing with your belongings prevent you from making your current environment work better for your or even moving to an environment where you will thrive.