My mom recently sold our family home. As a gift to her, I went home for a weekend and packed up her entire house. Being an organizer, I wanted to get as much accomplished as possible in a short time. So before we started packing her belongings, I had to know the following:
•what she was going to take with her to her new home
•what she was going to give to her kids and grand kids now versus later
•what she wanted to donate
We started by walking through the house and choosing what she would donate. I made sure we focused on one room at a time so she wouldn’t feel overwhelmed or get confused by the process. Instead of marking boxes for donation and leaving them for later, we moved all the donations to one room. With the giveaways in a separate, designated area, mom was able to easily evaluate the leftovers. (She was also able to point out just how much all of us kids had left at her house! I would like to note that I missed only one box of belongings when I officially moved to Washington.) After seeing how much was left, my mom was willing to get rid of more. We set aside a large space for items she wanted the family to have, even though she wasn’t sure who would want what. So that evening, we invited my two sisters and brother, plus three nephews, two nieces and a sister-in-law to come and sort through the items over take-out. With so much to divvy up among so many people, I set a time limit. If my siblings didn’t take their stuff home by the end of my stay, our mom would donate or sell the remainder to an antique shop. Without this deadline, I fear my mother would have had to drag the items to her new home.
Finally, when we had separated the family belongings and the donations from everything else, we packed up all of mom’s possessions with ease.
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