Someday, in the late afternoon of life, you will likely have to move. Whether to a condo, senior apartment or retirement center, you will have to downsize, and it won’t be anything like the current tidying/sorting fad. It won’t be trendy. It will be torture.
As you realize that memory invests objects in every room, you’ll have to decide which parts of your life to throw away. It’s enough to bring many to tears.
“That happens pretty commonly, actually,” says Jim Gariti of Moving Forward, a Madison-based company that specializes in moving older people (though they will help anyone downsize). Jim’s spouse, Marianne, started Moving Forward five years ago. It’s part of a thriving industry.
“The organizational and physical tasks, whether you are moving or downsizing to stay in the home, can be overwhelming,” says Jennifer Pickett, associate executive director of the National Association of Senior Move Managers, based in Hinsdale, Illinois. Its website, nasmm.org, provides tips on senior moving. Moving Forward is NASMM-accredited.
Aside from setting standards and certifying moving services, the nonprofit, organized in 2003, also provides local references. So does the Dane County Department of Human Services, which suggests Moving Maude, Caring Transitions and Moving Forward.
Staff at Moving Forward — the company has 30 employees — start by getting a sense of where the potential client is in their timeline. Are there any deadlines coming? Is the move motivated by a health crisis?
They then go visit the potential client’s home to get an idea of work that may need to be done. How big are the current and future residences? How many possessions? If family members
Jim Gariti: “We try to figure out which items in their current home make it feel like home.”
want to help, “all the better,” says Gariti, Moving Forward’s chief financial officer. The firm can take care of cleaning the home and readying it for sale, too.
Staff create a menu of possible services and estimates. They generally charge on an hourly basis. A small job may run $200. On the other hand, “we’re working on a home right now with multiple garages and outbuildings, with possessions stacked floor to ceiling,” says Gariti. That project is expected to run into thousands of dollars.
Sometimes the company is called in after a family has started, and failed, to do the sorting themselves. There’s a question of strength and stamina, Gariti says. Just going through documents, for example, may be “tougher for seniors than for younger folks who are able to do mental tasks for longer periods of time.”
Gariti characterizes some of what they do as close to social work. There’s “a certain amount of emotional support, and being the objective third party. ‘You know, it’s okay if we sell this plate that belonged to your mother,’ or ‘It’s okay to find a way to keep a selection of family photos that are valuable and not keep all of them.’”
What to take and what to leave is a big part of the process. “We try to figure out which items in their current home make it feel like home, so that we can be sure to move those items to the new home,” says Gariti. “Realistically, they can’t take all their things with them, but what we want is to find a way to keep those memories,” says Gariti. Staff will take some photos to create collages or shadowboxes.
Marianne Gariti (left) talk to clients Sparrow and Al about their move to the Oakwood Village community.
Sometimes items go to family members or are given to charity or sold. “We provide options, but we do not decide,” says Gariti.
But charities are often selective in what they’ll take. “We’ll do our best to sell what can’t be donated,” says Gariti. The firm has created a network of purchasers over the years, and staff work continually to expand the list.
“We work with a big variety of buyers, each of whom is looking to buy specific types of items,” says Gariti. “They have their own clients, and are willing to pay more for those items. You might have one buyer who likes to buy, say, dolls, or another buyer who likes to buy dressers.”
Staff will pack, move, unpack items and set things up at the new residence so that it feels like home, right up to hanging pictures on the wall.
“That’s probably the most gratifying part of the work that we do,” says Gariti. “These folks are trying to get ready. They’re unbelievably stressed. They’re overwhelmed. And they get into their new homes and they actually feel like they’re at home.”
Moving Forward
608-395-1821; movingforwardmadison.com
