Over the past year my elderly mother has required increasing levels of care, from independent living, to assisted living, to now living in a full time care facility. Moving her also involved sorting through and moving her personal and family belongings, and generally dealing with her life represented in an accumulation of things. Each move was a down size for her because there wasn’t room for everything in her new home and she had no use for many of the items she may have felt attached to in the past. This left me, my wife and other family members to sort everything out.
During the first move we employed family and friends to sort, store, give away and throw away items from her home. This was a huge job that made the stress of moving her even greater. We wanted to do right for her by taking care of the family items we know she thought were important. In reality, a small percentage of the total were important to her, or family, or family friends.
After giving away or storing prized dishes, photos, a few items of furniture or other “heirlooms”, there was just a mountain of stuff. We made countless trips to thrift stores or churches to give away clothes, house hold items and furniture. Ultimately we made many trips to the dump. It was exhausting.
Later in the year she required another move to a higher level of elder care. During this move we employed Estate Services to help us with the process we knew was so draining. We wish we would have used them from the beginning. Richard Old of Estate Services had simple advice, “take everything you want and leave the rest”. We only moved or stored the items that my Mom or other family members wanted. After we took care of those belongings we did nothing else. No thrift store runs or trips to the church to help supply the next rummage sale. No trips to the dump. We didn’t even have to clean. Estate Services took care of it all. Richard paid us a fair price for what was left and even saved out some priceless family photo albums that we had overlooked.
I used Estate services a second time when I recently closed out my Mom’s storage unit. Again, I took the items that were important to her or a family member and left everything else. Estate Services took care of everything, right down to closing out the storage unit. Richard also paid a fair price for the items I left in the unit knowing that he would clean and close out the unit.
I wouldn’t hesitate to use Estate Services again. They were great!
Mark Jonas