Have you been a snowbird forever and now want to care for only one house but you live in that other state most of the time and wonder how that can happen?
Today I’m going to talk about the 8 steps that I took to help organize my mom’s entire house, had it sold and had all items shipped to the place she now calls home.
There comes a point in time after going back and forth as a snowbird as my mom did from Chicago to Florida for about 15 years, that you finally decide no more taking care of 2 homes as she says: “ they can come here!”
But the amount of stuff that accumulated in her home was from all of the kids and grandkids and she did not know how to coordinate it all so she asked me to be in charge as she had decided to sell the house.
There are 8 steps I took to organize the entire house as the owner, my mom, was not there:
- The first thing we did was FaceTime each other so I could tag the furniture and wall hangings she wanted moved to Florida. I took photos so she knew what was being shipped and sent them by text of each room.
- I then cleared out all bathroom drawers, cabinets and closets and combined all items, placed in bins and sorted in 3 categories:
a) keep b) donate c) trash - We went through each bedroom closet, dressers and shelves as she was able to come home one time to go through all of her personal items and discussed how she wanted items sold or donated
- I organized all items in the garage and that would be the staging area for all items distributed to others
- I Scheduled a day for the entire family members to come pick up whatever items they wanted out of Grandma’s house and had them bring up all of the bins and items stored in the crawlspace. It took 5 kids over an hour to bring it all up as more than ½ the crawlspace was used for storage. I sorted through all items by creating a staging table, took photos, sent text for family to decide what they wanted and placed all items in the garage for pick up.
- Several items were donated and taken weekly to Savers – I like this place the best as they usually take everything without question. Lots of decorations needed to be sorted. Lots of recycle items such as outdated phones, ipads, printers, electronics etc taken to the recycle place weekly
We used Marketplace to sell a few items as I was working at the house. - I have a couple of Estate Sale companies that I like to call on if there are sufficient amount of items needed to be sold. In this case, anything that wasn’t taken by the kids was being moved to another home in Florida so for this home I just needed to get 3 estimates from movers, and I coordinated the dates with them.
- It’s best to tell all of your neighbors and everyone you know your desire to sell your home as you start the downsizing process. We were fortunate that someone in her area found the buyer who bought my mom’s house. She was the actual woman who helped the builder sell it to my mom over 20 years ago. How ironic, right? She was a perfect buyer as she did not have to have her house sell before she could buy my mom’s home.
I worked at my mom’s house approximately 20 hours per week myself from June thru December. Depending on how fast a house needs to be completed will determine if I have others work with me. There was no rush but my mom was praying it would sell before Christmas so that was a great present as everything was taken care of and sold by December 12th.
Starting the process of either downsizing (getting ready to move) or rightsizing (staying in place) takes a lot of time and planning. If you’re not sure how to begin but know you want to make some changes start with a free call and we can discuss your needs.
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