Farmington Life Newspaper, June 05

Help For One of the Hardest Jobs

by Stephanie Riefe

 

When Carl Gundersen was faced with cleaning out his mother¹s house in Manchester, after she moved to an assisted living facility, he was a bit overwhelmed.

“My mom has been in that house for 55 years,” he said.

To complicate matters, Mr. Gundersen, who is an only child and whose father passed away 10 years ago, lives in Massachusetts.

“When I first went down there and looked around and saw everything in there, I couldn¹t imagine having to go through there myself and make all the arrangements,” he said.

Then he saw an ad for Karen Martin’s company, Life Moves, LLC, in the Yellow Pages.

“It was a godsend,” he said.

In lists of the most stressful events in one’s life, moving is usually in the top five. Add to that a move based on illness, death or the need to downsize and the stress meter can skyrocket.

Ms. Martin helps people when they downsize their possessions in order to get their house ready for sale due to an empty nest, illness, death or a life change such as moving to another part of the country. And then there are those who want to downsize without moving, who are strategically planning for their future.

Her background is in nursing and teaching. But after running a home health care agency she decided she didn’t want to work for anybody but herself.

After reaching that decision, the question was what to do next?

A friend, Carol Presutti, owner of Q Real Estate, and long-time Farmington resident, asked her, “What do you like to do? What are you good at?”

Ms. Martin said she had been learning and collecting antiques and collectible for 20 years. She liked that. Mrs. Presutti suggested she start running estate sales.

“By Monday morning she called me with a client who needed to downsize 70 percent of their possessions,” said Ms. Martin, of the family that had lived in its home for 46 years.

That was six years ago. Since then, she has been helping people sort, pack and discard, all while being respectful of the variety of ways people process such an event.

In the beginning she was mostly liquidating the estates of senior citizens, clients who were either moving into a condominium, an assisted living facility, or an addition connected to the home of an adult child, or helping adult children of a parent who had had passed away. In her first year she ran 12 estate sales.

“It was fun. I loved it,” she said from her home in town.

As the population ages, downsizing is becoming another stage of life.

Developments for those 55 and older are springing up everywhere and filling up fast. Longer, healthier lives can often mean remaining independent longer, but needing an easier home to navigate.

The growing field that Ms. Martin is part of is still in its beginnings. She has developed her own way of doing things and it keeps her consulting with possible clients two to three times a week.

“When we first got together, she went through the house with me and identified items that had some value that would go to auction, other things that could be donated and other things with no value,” said Mr. Gundersen of their first meeting, which lasted about two hours. “I paid her essentially $100 for her time that day, but the information that she provided me just in that two hours was well worth the $100.”

Mr. Gundersen contracted for more of her services after that, but said the plan was comprehensive enough that he could have stopped there and executed it on his own.

The consultation, which can cost anywhere from $100 to $250, takes about an hour and one half. At the end of that time the homeowners will have a plan.

After that, it is up to the homeowners how much or how little they want to involve Ms. Martin. She can help execute some, none, or all of the plan.

“What¹s most important is to develop a plan,” she said. “Nobody knows how to begin.”

She contracts with between two and eight others for her work, as well as using other resources to help those who are downsizing.

The cost of a top to bottom emptying out of a home and leaving it in broom-swept condition is between $1,000 to $5,000, not including refuse removal fees. Prices vary with home size and the level of involvement.

Ms. Martin suggested that, if possible, people start the process a year or two in advance. But she has also worked with people who are moving in a matter of weeks.

“You don¹t have to move this year, or next year, but you¹ve got to start to sort through all the stuff today,” she said.

Start looking at personal papers, which take the longest. Go through the attic (in the morning when the light is better and it is cooler in the summer) and the basement. If you need help, the items can be brought to the first level for viewing and the decision of whether to keep them or not can be made by the owner.

“Too many of my clients are caught off guard,” said Ms. Martin.

Start the dialogue with the family. Let your wishes be known. Ms. Martin, whose parents are deceased, said that her mother did not want to discuss getting things in order when she was ill.

She found out from her sister who had a telephone conversation with their mother shortly before she died that her mom wanted to be cremated, not buried, as Ms. Martin had thought.

“I never realized she would have wanted that,” she said of her mother’s wishes.

Getting financial affairs in order and knowing a parent’s wishes are crucial to the process.

Ms. Martin’s schedule is dependent on what the client wants: one woman wanted her to come for a few hours once a week, another needed her every day for three weeks. The ages of her clients have varied from 42 to 97.

She said she gets e-mails from all over the country from people who have relatives in the state and need her help. Often they have found her name when searching for help on the Internet.

She is part of two organizations: the National Association of Senior Move Managers (www.nasmm.com) and the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.net).

When deciding how parents are doing living on their own, she said ask a few

Questions: is it safe, are they comfortable, who is nearby to check in on them regularly and is there some socialization?

And don’t listen to your parents when they tell you they are fine. Make sure they are. She said the belief that people can stay in their homes forever is just not true, nor should it be when you are alone.

“That’s a myth,” she said.

When moving parents, she advocates they be within an hour’s drive. She said medical issues, mobility, vision and other factors make it easier to help when parents are closer.

Mr. Gundersen didn’t want his 83-year-old mother living along any more.

After her name went on a waiting list for an assisted living facility in Rhode Island, things moved quickly.

His wife helped him move his mother, but the rest was up to him. With Ms. Martin and her staff’s help, the job took three weeks.

“Her crew is pretty efficient,” he said.

The execution of the plan is the biggest help, he added. In addition, Mr. Gundersen has some physical issues which make lifting more difficult.

“I’m a bit of a special case. I have two artificial shoulders and pin in my hip. I can’t go in and do the lifting and the moving necessary,” he said.  “So that part of it too was a huge, huge load off. Literally.”

Such a task is also emotionally difficult, he said. Mr. Gundersen, 44, said he basically moved out when he went to college, but his room had been kept the same since he left.

“Going through 55 years worth of accumulated items it was very emotional,” he said. “This was the house that I grew up in.”

But today, it is done. He said he has maybe one or two more visits before the transition is over and the house is sold.

The things that touched him the most during the process were the photographs of his parents when they were young and of his dad during his military service in World War II.

“My father was an amazing man,” he said. “I miss him.”

The pictures and the memorabilia were some of the things he would keep.

“The stuff that reminds me that my parents had incredible lives,” he said.

The moving process has many pitfalls. One problem, for most people, is when they start this task, they start taking things out that haven’t been seen in decades and the memories start coming. Ms. Martin takes this into account and encourages people to tell their stories.

Her role becomes that of an active listener who offers reflection and validation. She also developed a set of open-ended questions to help facilitate moving the process along.

“My clients were having a very hard time letting go,” she said. “What do you do about all these emotions?”

She said the telling of stories and remembering is an important part of moving on and letting go. She has helped clients capture some of that with recordings or encouraging them to write down memories. Digital cameras are great tools for documentation.

“I am in the process of writing a book based on my clients’ stories,” she said, which she is self-publishing and should be out by the end of the summer.

She also comes up with creative ways to keep items ‹ she suggested to one woman with hundreds of playbills that she remove the covers and put them in a photo album.

Besides helping people through this transition, she also wants to get the word out about the process and the rewards that can come from reviewing a lifetime of accumulation. Ms. Martin gives talks and seminars at senior centers, churches and to entrepreneurial groups, as well as appearing in print, on the radio and local television. She hopes to one day be a national spokesperson for the industry.

“I’m still the teacher,” she said.

Ms. Martin also lives what she preaches. Her home does not have a basement or an attic and she tries to live by the rule that if you can see it and reach it it’s useful, otherwise out it goes to someone who can use it.

There are several mottoes that this mother of two college-aged women uses and lives by ‹ “less is more” is one of them. Of course, she has saved important memorabilia for her daughters.

“Anything you can reach is useful and anything you can’t get to and you haven’t used in two or three years you don’t need,” she said.

This applies to mementos, as well as dishes and pots and pans. Ms. Martin used to have 50 seashells in her collection. Now she has 12.

But often, applying that principal to your home is more difficult than it sounds. Sorting through everything and organizing what to throw away and what to donate are issues that the homeowner often cannot decide on his or her. Sometimes children aren’t that much help either.

Ms. Martin has contacts with charities (her clients donate a lot to families in need in Hartford through Catholic Charities) and auction houses. She can organize an on-site estate sale or help organize it for the homeowner to run.

Life Moves, LLC, will help with everything from cleaning the home when it’s empty to refuse removal. Some homeowners contract with her to come in for a few hours to throw things away so the owner can get a better handle on really seeing the possessions.

After items to be kept are chosen, if a person wants, he or she can leave things hanging in the closets and on the walls and her team will pack it up and take care of it.

“It relieves the stress,” said Ms. Martin.

Her company can also help set the person up in his or her new home if they move within the state. She said it takes three to six months to feel adjusted and for some elderly folks it might take that long to unpack.

Her company can take care of that as well to ease the transition. In all, she said, the process involves looking back, letting go and moving forward.

Ms. Martin has loads of downsizing tips as well: use paper plates between dishes when packing china, use vegetable boxes for packing because they are shallow and stack well.

“Tomato boxes are fabulous,” she said.

Most people dread moving, downsizing and letting go. What’s in it for Karen Martin? The reward of making one challenge in life that much smoother for people gratifies her.

“It is rewarding to be told ‘I never could have done this without your help.’” she said. To reach Karen Martin, call 676-8251 or go to www.lifemoves.com.