Moving gently forward | News

We all have stuff, things and papers that may or may not be important, furniture that used to belong to our mothers and furniture we bought new, pictures our children drew in grade school or a beloved pet’s dish we couldn’t bear to part with. 

For those who are one of life’s survivors and reach old age, that adds up to a lot of stuff that someone will need to deal with. It can be overwhelming. That’s when Sherri Gillette and her team from Caring Transitions of Tucson can help. They know how to gently take a person from a big place to a more manageable (and safer) space for our elderly parents or even us.

No one wants to move out of their comfortable home but sometimes circumstances make it impossible to stay put. Gillette’s job is to make the transition easier.

“We help them through all the decisions,” she said. “We do a space plan for them so they can see how their items they’ve selected will fit into their new home.”

That’s not all.

“Then we pack everything. We have our own trucks and movers and we physically move everything, then we completely unpack and resettle, mirroring how they live.”

Every care is taken to see that things are placed in the same way they were in the former home. Even their books will be in the same order on the bookshelf and their clothes will be in the same order in the new closet. It’s still an adjustment although every effort is made to ease the process.

It’s no small task stuffing 3,200 square-feet of belongings into a 700-square-foot apartment. It starts with off-loading household goods. Gillette and her team begin the task in the gentlest way possible. They listen and observe. 

“We can tell where they’re living in their home by the little nest that they create,” Gillette said. “We’ll say, ‘It looks like you sit here and you like to have your things on the left and you have certain things positioned around your television.’”

This helps clients see how it’s possible to move “because mostly it feels impossible to them.” It also helps move clients forward in the process. 

Mostly it’s about patience. Gillette said the staff patiently works with clients to move them to a new, smaller space.

Easy enough to say but what happens to the stuff?

Gillette said they try to honor clients’ requests such as giving things to the now-grown children.

“There will be things you have to give up; we can send them to your family who won’t want it,” she said. “Your family will not want it, but we’ll do that for you. They’re not our kids.”

Another idea that Gillette has is to have a reverse birthday where friends who still like the stuff come to a party and the client gives their things away along with a story of the items’ histories. This points to the problem of downsizing its core: emotional attachment to things.

“We give them coping strategies,” Gillette said. “We give them ideas on how they can begin that process.”

For example: Do it 15 minutes at a time, one time a week. Take one closet, one drawer at a time. That can start years before anyone is ready to move.

The team looks at clothing. What hasn’t been worn in a year? And the kitchen: “You’re not going to need 19 forks, 19 spoons, 19 knives,” Gillette said. “In your new life you will need a much smaller amount of things.”

Still, people like to hang onto things. Gillette has found that typically there are three reasons.

“One is someone gave that to them so they feel that responsibility, ‘What if they know I’ve given it away?’” she said. “Usually I tell people the act of giving is actually a gift to the giver. … What someone does with it afterward is sort of immaterial so it’s ok to let go.”

Second is clients think they might need it later.

“Well, if you haven’t needed it for the last five years you probably aren’t ever going to need it,” Gillette said. “Honestly, at the end of the day all we really need are some personal papers and somewhere to sleep to survive.”

Last, clients believe their items are valuable and that also comes from an emotional attachment. 

“Typically women are very attached to their china that they got as a wedding gift which has almost no value in the marketplace,” she added. “For men it’s their workshop, their tools, which they haven’t used for years.”

Taking one by one, Gillette and her team work through all the objections clients have. Sometimes a compromise has to be reached, such as letting clients take place settings for four, for example. For men it’s making a small tool kit of their best tools.

Not everyone has a hard time letting go, however. Some people are ready to let go. Then it becomes a question of what to do with the stuff. Whatever the client wants, the team can accomplish it. They can pack things up to donate, ship, sell, whatever is needed. The entire process is treated with kid gloves and the utmost respect and that includes the way they treat clients.

“This is really hard for our clients,” Gillette said. “We have to treat it with respect. Even if we don’t think it’s sellable I don’t want to hear it’s not valuable because it is valuable to someone.”

Gillette is mindful of the fact that some clients have lived through the Depression or poverty and they hold on to things.

Another situation that the Caring team encounters is people are storing things for others, such as their parents’ stuff or their kids’ stuff.

It turns out the process of downsizing can be a long one. Gillette said they have clients they’ve worked with for years. “We have to go at the speed of the client.”

Caring Transitions of Tucson is a franchise and Gillette is the owner of this particular business. She became interested in the service when she had to help her own mother move from her Iowa home to Tucson. The process became complicated. She had to find movers, then get the household stuff into storage. Someone had to work on transferring medical records. Someone had to pack the items the mom needed here. “It was one thing after another,” Gillette said. Six vendors later her mother made it to Tucson but in the meantime Gillette thought there had to be a better way. That’s when she found Caring Transitions and bought her own franchise.

“I had felt a need in my own life and struggled through all of those massive decisions knowing that I had just started a corporate job and couldn’t go to Iowa for two weeks to figure out how to get all this done myself,” she said. “I was counting on others, too many others. Some people did great. Some people didn’t do so great.”

Great service like this does come at a cost. Each situation is unique so it’s priced accordingly.

“It can be $2,000 or it can be $7,000,” Gillette said. “We price it based on their specific project.”

Gillette’s best advice?

“Start making your plan now so that your kids don’t make those decisions for you because they won’t make the same decisions (you would),” she said.