Sorting & Clearing Personal Possessions When Moving Into A Care Home

As parents, relatives or friends get older and their health deteriorates, there comes a time when family and friends can’t cope or meet their needs anymore. Deciding whether that person would be better off with the round-the-clock care a nursing home offers is an emotionally charged choice to make. Sometimes this move requires selling the family home leading to relatives and friends being faced with the task of clearing out and sorting a lifetime’s worth of their possessions.

Sorting through a loved one’s possessions is a job you don’t feel like you should be doing, it feels intrusive and wrong. If the owner is unable to make decisions for themselves, it’s also daunting knowing that many of the items will hold sentimental value which is not evident to you.

Once you and your relative or friend (if able to) have decided what they’re taking to their new home, it’s hard to know where to begin when clearing out a house. Below are five tips to help you get started.

Put valuables and sentimental items in a safe place

Box up and move anything you immediately find which has value, especially if the house is likely to be empty at night. Store this in a safe, secure place.

Bin/recycle trash

Do a sweep of the house and get rid of obvious rubbish like old medicines, piles of magazines, out of date food, crusty cosmetics or worn out clothing.

Clear space to sort

Clear a room or large area to use as a ‘sorting space’. Here you can allocate and bag up items ready for sale, charity, recycling (freecycle is a useful local group to join) or to keep. Try and move bags on as soon as you can to clear more space – a good opportunity to have a break is taking some bags to the local charity shop or clothes bank.

If you have a lot of furniture use an empty room as a showroom for family/friends, potential buyers or auctioneers.

Do you really need it?

Go through all the items you’ve put on one side to keep but aren’t sentimental and ask yourself will I really display or use it? Talk to family members and friends – you could even put together a quick inventory for them to chose from or take pictures.

Dealing with the sentimental stuff

If you are storing family papers and photos, or items your loved one may ask to see/use again, use damp and vermin proof boxes to preserve these as much as possible. With so much going on it may help to look at these later when you are feeling less emotional.

When dealing with treasured family trinkets, furniture or jewellery etc. which can be passed onto family or friends, a fair way of dividing these could be to put them into piles of similar items for each person take in turns to pick. Alternatively, you may organically decide who’s keeping what during the clearing process.

Hiring organising and decluttering professionals such as Make Space, who are impartial, yet empathic, can help ease the difficult process of clearing a loved one’s home.

Make Space can help you as little or as much as you choose. We can help you kick-start the process, we can provide you with a written plan and schedule, or work with you for the entire clearance. It’s your choice.

If you are in this situation and would appreciate a helping hand, please don’t hesitate to get in touch to talk through a provisional plan.