Moving house can be stressful, and even more so when you are doing it with an elderly person. The elderly need to be cared for during the move and feel at home in their new home.
There are some things we can do to make the transition easier for them. And this is exactly what we’re discussing in this blog.
Start Your Packing Far Before the Moving Date
Older people are pretty forgetful and when you’re juggling a hundred things before the move, you may not always have the time to sit and pack all of their stuff patiently.
This is why you need to pace yourself out and start packing at least two to three weeks before your decided moving date. Start with packing your stuff that you don’t need and move to the things of an elderly person.
This is because you never know when older people need their stuff — even when they think they don’t. And when you’ve packed all of their stuff a long time before, it can become a huge headache to search for their things in the packed stuff and repack again.
So start packing with your things and then move to pack the elderly person’s stuff.
Keep the Important Papers Separately
Elderly people may have a lot of important documents, agreements, identity cards, passports, bills and a lot of such important stuff. During all the hectic packing, you can miss out or lose such important stuff. And so, it’s best to get all of this paperwork before you even start packing and keep them in a secure place.
In addition to organising their paperwork, consider organising their physical possessions. Spend some time going through their closets, drawers, cabinets, and even boxes. This is a good time to get rid of things they don’t need or don’t use and put things into categories that make sense to them.
Make Joint Decisions About Leaving Their Stuff
Some elderly persons have the habit of lugging a lot of stuff wherever they go. While it may seem tempting to discard most of this stuff during the relocation, refrain from doing so.
Instead, sit down and talk about your constraints and ask them to pick a few things they would like to discard — to keep them safely in a storage location.
You can sit down with them, sort through the stuff and keep aside all of the things they wouldn’t need. You can segregate these things into different piles: one to donate, one to sell and one to discard. Do this process in discussion with them and help them to make strong decisions.
After you’ve sorted through all the stuff, you can also get the help of a professional mover to help with the packing.
Pack Their Necessities in a Carry-On Bag
Even when you’re aren’t moving that far, you may need to have a separate carry-on bag that doesn’t get shipped with the movers.
In this bag, you can ask the elderly person to put in all the essentials they need — like medicines, sweaters, toiletries, medical apparatus, change of clothes, identity proofs and other similar stuff.
You can have this bag handy with you throughout the move if they need something during transportation.
Create a Support System
It may help to ask some people you trust to keep an eye on things while you are away or to care for them while you are gone. You might ask a family member, a friend, a paid caregiver, or a professional.
Create a support system that helps you with moving house with the elderly person. Involve family, friends and neighbours in the move. They may have some good ideas and can also lend a hand to take care of small stuff with the relocation.
Make a List of People to Inform About Change of Address
If the elderly person has spent quite a long time in one place, they would have spent years building up a network of friends and social groups in their local area. And it can be pretty hard for them to give that up and move.
So to help them keep with all their old friends, create a list of all the people you need to inform about their relocation.
Keep jotting people down on a list and inform them about the new address and any telephone number to contact. This way, the older person wouldn’t feel so sad about leaving all of the friends behind.
Hire a Reliable Mover
We can’t stress enough how important it is to have a reliable moving company to help with your move. Especially when you’re moving house with an elderly person, you need all the help you can get.
You require movers who are self-starters and can take complete care of the relocation and take some load off your plate.
At Book a Mover, our removalists have been known for providing relief to the moving families by taking full charge of the relocating and delivering stuff to the new house without a single issue. If you need help to move anywhere in Australia, reach out to us now.
