Designing Moves

Should I Move or Downsize?

Christine Smart — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:55:06 +0000

The thoughts have danced across your mind… “Should I really move? Maybe we should downsize? Some of this stuff just has to go?” Those thoughts are quickly pushed aside with the reality of seeing too much stuff to deal with. How do you get rid of things, who do you call, is your treasured collection worth anything these days, how in the world would you ever get moved, can I afford it? Then there is the realization of the cost of continued home repairs and maintenance.

Moving to a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) is a one-stop move. You are able to move into independent apartments and receive care as you need it through long term nursing care. When you compare the costs for staying in your home, which include everything from homeowners insurance, and property taxes, along with various costs like cable, security, and housekeeping, versus the one monthly fee at the CCRC, it makes financial sense to move.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau: Starting this year and through the next 19 years, 11,000 people will turn 65 years old every day. There is a tidal wave of older adults wanting independent and assisted living coming! Currently there is an abundance of independent living apartments, and communities are offering discounts and specials to move in. Take advantage of these offers before supply and demand drive the prices up.

Studies have shown that older adults who move while they are still in control transition better. We have yet to work with a client who enjoys the exhausting process of moving. When our team at Designing Moves LLC provides guidance with decisions and helps with needs, the stress leaves our clients’ faces.

Emergency decisions are not always best and it’s hard to control where you may end up living if you have a fall or sudden illness. Waiting too long to move means someone else will be making the decisions about your treasures, and it may not be what you want!
Many times families don’t live near by and if they do they are busy with their families and careers. That is where the help of a senior move manager makes the impossible possible. Designing Moves LLC provides solutions to all those questions that glare at you when you open the closet door. We can help you decide what items will fit in your new place, where the best place is to donate or dispose of items, or what items might be worth getting a second opinion on.

We bring peace of mind by handling all the moving day details from directing the movers, to setting up the new home, unpacking and removing boxes, and following up with you to see how you are doing in your new home. We can stop by weeks after the move and take those things that you thought you wanted, but have since decided you would rather live without.

What is the best plan? Start now, one room at a time, one drawer at a time, and begin to sift through your stuff. Get an expert involved who is knowledgeable about antiques, collectables, etc. Decide now who should inherit grandma’s paintings, the family silver, or the Amana rocker and give the family a written list of these decisions. Find a place you would like to live and let Designing Moves LLC help you move in with your favorite things. Begin to enjoy your new life without the burden of household chores or repairs. Your kids will thank you for it – it’s the best gift you can give yourself and your family!

Kovels on Antiques & Collectibles Latest Trends

Christine Smart — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:29:09 +0000

Decorators like to follow the latest trends. A recent list suggested these: “In” are dark interiors, “Out” are all white walls. Taxidermy birds are “in” but antlers are “out.” Throne-like wood chairs are “in,” and modern plastic furniture is “out,” etc. I wonder where these trends are followed, because none appear where I live. Is it really true that the “Dark Ages” or the “Medieval look” is replacing “white and minimal”? I am happy with “hodgepodge eclectic.” My house is filled with furniture and accessories found one-at-a-time at flea markets and auctions.
Mailboxes with personality are becoming more popular in the suburbs. We have a brass hotel mailbox, the kind that was used near a drop-down chute next to a hotel elevator. A home builder near here gives his customers a special new mailbox, shaped like the house, when they’re ready to move in.
One way to date mid century jewelry: white gold was first used in the early 1940s. Pink gold also became more popular around that time. An iconic piece from that era was a bow-shaped pin in yellow and pink gold with small rubies set to look like the ribbon that forms the bow.
Tool collectors seem to change focus from decade to decade. Hand-wrought iron tools were popular in the 1950s. They represented the early history of tools and looked great in the then-popular room with the “Colonial Williamsburg look.” Coopers’ tools were wanted in the 1960s for Arts and Crafts rooms. Braces intrigued the 1970s collector, and wooden planes were hot in the 1980s. Now it’s tiptop condition that attracts tool collectors (see Warman’s Tools Field Guide)
The fabrics of the 50′s are coming back in style and are even being reproduced. Barkcloth with traditional patterns is back.
Frisbee collectors want advertising Frisbees made in the past 25 years. Look for frisbees that have ads for McDonald’s, Kodak, Keebler, Coppertone, Tony the Tiger, movies and the Olympics. Prices for mint Frisbees range from $20 to $30.
Uniforms are becoming popular with companies and schools and the look is becoming fashionable. Vintage clothing stores report brisk sales in low-priced uniforms from service station attendants or delivery personnel. Military uniforms have always been in fashion.

TIPS:
Save your broken dishes, vases and other decorative china to make mosaic stepping stones or tabletops for your garden. Chipped vases can still be used for flowers, or turned upside down to make toad homes.
Never store an iron pan while it is damp. To be sure it is dry, heat it on a stove burner for a minute.
If a thread in a woven fabric, carpet or sweater pulls or tears, do not cut it. Get a crochet hook or large pin and weave the thread into the fabric.
If you are buying a safe to store coins, jewelry, valuable papers, paper money, rare sports cards or other valuables, don’t forget that a thief can just carry the safe away if is is light and not bolted to a wall or floor. We laughed at the full-page ad in our local newspaper that shows a mailman carrying a boxed new safe to the buyer’s front door. A large safe, however, may be too heavy to put anywhere but in the garage or basement and too big to fit through a standard door.

Survey: Most Baby Boomers Lack a Plan to Care for Parents

Christine Smart — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:32:37 +0000

The survey of 600 adults ages 45 to 65, conducted for the HomeInstead Senior Care network, also found:
• 31% don’t know how many medications their parents take.
• 34% don’t know whether their parents have a safe deposit box or where the key is.
• 36% don’t know where their parents’ financial information is located.
“The majority of caregivers we work with have done no advance planning,” says Jeff Huber, president of Home Instead Senior Care, a company that provides non-medical care services. “It is not important until it’s urgent. So much stress and uncertainty down the road can
be prevented.” Lack of planning can lead to serious complications when decisions need to be made quickly, says palliative care nurse practitioner Mimi Mahon, an associate professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
“It’s vitally important to plan ahead and have these conversations with parents, or families can act out of fear and make mistakes when emergencies arise.”
Prescription drugs are of particular concern. In the survey, 49% couldn’t name a single drug their parents took. Ask parents about their medications and, if necessary, do research, experts say. Find out the dose, what it’s for, who prescribed it and why. People 65 and older account for about a third of all medications prescribed in the
U.S., according to the National Institutes of Health, and older patients are more likely to have long-term and multiple prescriptions, which could lead to unintentional misuse.
“It’s kind of a never-ending process for caregivers,” says Sandy Markwood, head of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. “It gets further complicated when there is more than the family practitioner. A parent might have several specialists. It’s a lot for a caretaker to keep
up.”
Markwood says the Administration on Aging, also under HHS, has been encouraging better record-keeping by seniors and stronger communication between seniors and caretakers since Hurricane Katrina.
“Then you had a situation when seniors were evacuated without their medications and no one knew what medications they were on,” Markwood says. “Doctors had to start from scratch.”
One must-have answer for caretakers:What drugs can parents go without and which ones must be taken on schedule. For instance, blood pressure and anti-depressant medications cannot be missed, Mahon says. The bottom line, she says, is being a staunch advocate for your parents’ health care starts with “having conversations and putting plans in place.”
Source: Janice Lloyd, USA Today, June 21, 2011

Storing Collectibles; May Not Be a Good Idea

Christine Smart — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:19:14 +0000

Tip from Kovels – June 2011 issue

Storing collectibles now and hoping they’ll go up in value later may or may not be a good idea. Storing pottery, glass and metal in a dry attic or basement is usually OK, but not if the rooms get very hot (over 90 degrees) or very cold (below freezing). Furniture can dry out or rot in climates you don’t enjoy yourself. Linens attract insects. Be wary of plastic bags that could melt in high heat. Plastic jewelry, toys and purses can melt or disintegrate over time; heat destroys plastic. Rented storage should be air-conditioned and heated, but it’s expensive. If you don’t have room or the right conditions for storage, it might be better to sell – even at low prices.

A Life-or-Death Decision: Your Home by Scott Burns

Christine Smart — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:25:46 +0000

A Life-or-Death Decision: Your Home

By Scott Burns

BOERNE, Texas—Most of the people in the room have gray or white hair. I count 24 when I arrive. At 70, it isn’t often that I lower the average age when I enter a room. Here, I do. The women outnumber the men 2-to-1. This would have filled me with raw delight at a college mixer 50 years ago. Today it is a blunt reminder: Women live longer than men.

I’ve come to listen to Rick Hunsicker. He’s a retirement community marketing consultant, and he is here to map out our shelter choices as we get old. We’re meeting at Morningside Ministries at Menger Springs in Boerne, a canonic but fast-growing Texas town west of San Antonio. Our meeting place is a continuing-care retirement community, known as a CCRC in the trade. It’s where an older person can live independently—but without lawn-mowing or meal-preparation chores. When, and if, necessary you can move to assisted-living or nursing care—all on the same beautiful 34 acres.

I have a personal interest in this. Several years ago I urged a lovely and funny Dallas friend to move to a retirement community. A move, I thought, was the best way for her to deal with a situation that would be manageable in a retirement community—but impossible in her home of 40 years. She didn’t move. It was too difficult. Not long after, she committed suicide.

A few years before that, I had urged my stepfather to sell his duplex in Sarasota, Fla. Move to a CCRC, I suggested. But he didn’t, or couldn’t. Finally he collapsed, exhausted after weeks of daily visits to my stepmother in a nursing home after she had had a stroke. He might have lived years longer—if they had moved before his late-night fall.

Stories in this genre don’t have happy endings. Sadly, few people understand that where you live can literally be a life-or-death decision. The problem here is that we freeze up as we get older. In decades of reader letters, I’ve seen the single greatest error people make is being tied to their homes, even if it kills them.

That’s where Rick Hunsicker comes in. Over the course of 90 minutes, he walks us through the real costs of owning a house. Then he adds the invisible cost of owning a house when you no longer have a mortgage—what economists call the “imputed income” from not having to pay rent. He points out that while your house may be your biggest asset, it is also a major point of vulnerability, subject to repairs and big-ticket replacement costs.

He asks, “What happens if a few of your neighbors are foreclosed and their $300,000 house is sold for $250,000?” The question is rhetorical. “You’ve just lost $50,000,” he says. That’s one of the really bad effects of the enormous overhang of unsold and foreclosed houses across the country.

Then he walks us through a checklist of services that are part of living in a retirement community—meals you no longer have to prepare, housekeeping, transportation, fitness facilities, pool, security, basic cable, Internet access and the proximity of medical care. It’s a long list. Aging homeowners need to buy those things off an expensive a la carte menu, one at a time. In a retirement community, it’s part of the deal.

He’s serious about this side-by-side comparison. Press him, as I had done a few weeks earlier, and he’ll show you his spreadsheet for making the comparison. Put in accurate numbers for the cost of supporting your house and the cost of the other services, and a move that seems expensive can be good economics, as well as a better way to age-in-place.

Many retirees, he points out, are paralyzed. They think they will wait for the housing market to recover before they sell their homes. In the same period, he says, the cost of entering a retirement community will also rise. Why? Because building is at a standstill even though the need continues to grow. At the moment there is overcapacity, so retirement communities around the country are offering special deals and discounts.

The implication: Sell a bargain to get a bargain. It isn’t taking a loss; it’s changing to a better horse.

Only published comments… Apr 08 2011, 03:00 PM by admin

Christine Smart Receives Certificate of Achievement in Aging Sensitivity Training from the National Association of Senior Move Managers

Christine Smart — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:08:16 +0000

(Hinsdale, IL – February 1, 2011) — The National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM) announced today that Christine Smart of Designing Moves LLC, Marion, IA, has successfully completed NASMM’s “Old Like Me” Aging Sensitivity Intensive Training and has earned a Certificate of Achievement.

This program was offered in conjunction with the National Association of Senior Move Managers 2011 Annual Conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida in January. Participants completed a three-hour intensive program facilitated by Vanessa M. Dazio, OTD, OTR/L, CEAS II, NBCCH.

This innovative workshop provided participants with the unique opportunity to literally “walk in the shoes” of an older adult through a series of hands-on exercises and comprehensive sensory perception education. “There are so many common misconceptions about older adults and the aging process,” said Mary Kay Buysse, NASMM’s Executive Director. “This training program allowed select participants to experience the sensory losses associated with aging, while enhancing their awareness of disabling factors, hazards, barriers and conditions that can ultimately influence an older adult’s quality of life.”

As part of the training, participants discussed the impact of the sensory, physical and mental declines they experienced. “I have a broader understanding of what it feels like to be old today,” said Christine Smart. “The aging sensitivity training provided me with a heightened awareness of the hidden, but complex barriers that guide how I serve my senior clients, as well as helped me to identify new strategies to assist my clients in coping with age-related changes.”

Designing Moves LLC started in 2008 with a passion to help older adults with downsizing and moving.

The National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM) is a not-for-profit, professional association of organizations dedicated to assisting older adults and families with the physical and emotional demands of downsizing, relocating, or modifying their homes. As the only professional association in North America devoted to helping the rapidly increasing 55+ population with middle and later life transition issues, NASMM members are committed to maximizing the dignity and autonomy of all older adults. NASMM is internationally recognized for its innovative programs, leadership and expertise on issues related to senior move management, transition and relocation issues affecting older adults. For more information, visit www.nasmm.org.

Senior Move Managers Help with Impossible

Christine Smart — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:17:45 +0000

December 30, 2010, 10:00 am

When Moving Seems Impossible

By PATRICK EGAN

Patricia Wendler had been trying to sell her Southport, N.C., home for four years. Just before Thanksgiving, she finally got an offer, with one major contingency: Mrs. Wendler, 80, had less than three weeks to move, or no deal.

She and her husband, who died in 2008, had retired to Southport 16 years ago from New Hartford, N.Y. In that time, the Wendlers had accumulated furniture that wouldn’t fit in her new apartment, tools she wouldn’t need and years upon years of paperwork. “I kind of stored everything,” she said.

Her daughter-in-law, June Wendler, described the task of relocation as a “tornado.” She called Jane Roberts, a senior move manager in Wilmington, N.C., for help.

Initially, Patricia Wendler was not thrilled.

“I was a little resentful,” she said. “Why would I need someone like that? I’m not used to having people do things for me.”

The Wendlers are among more than 50,000 families to hire a certified senior move manager this year, up from 30,000 just two years ago, according to the National Association of Senior Move Managers. These services don’t come cheap: Most move managers charge $25 to $60 per hour. A top-to-bottom move can require several days of planning, packing and unpacking, running $1,500 to $4,000 or more — not including the cost of the actual movers.

Despite the expense, many families are finding senior move managers indispensable, and not just because they handle the logistics. Tensions can spill over when an elderly parent must relocate. Hundreds of necessary decisions and actions can swallow time the family may not have; the inevitable negotiations and concessions can trouble even the best parent-child relationships.

Surveys show that the elderly overwhelmingly wish to remain in their long-term homes, and to many of them moving represents a loss of control. “These moves usually are precipitated by something that’s happened — a health crisis, a death of a spouse, a loss of driving ability,” said Margit Novack, a senior move manager in Philadelphia.

A good move manager helps to clear a path to the new home while ensuring that the senior is always in control, regardless of who made the first call. “These people don’t want anyone telling them what to do. You have to walk a very fine line,” said Ms. Roberts.

“We become their surrogate friend or surrogate daughter,” added Judy Rough, a senior move manager in Phoenix.

By taking the adult children out of the driver’s seat, a manager can help circumvent family hostilities. “It really lets the adult child be their companion in the journey. The adult child isn’t the bad cop,” said Mary Kay Buysse, executive director of N.A.S.M.M. “It really lets the family be the family.”

In Southport last month, Ms. Roberts helped Mrs. Wendler sort through what to keep and what to donate to charity. She packed everything, hired the movers and then unpacked in the new apartment. She even photographed the interior of Mrs. Wendler’s former home so as to reproduce the layout as closely as possible, making sure that if the toothbrush sat on the right side of the sink, that’s exactly where Mrs. Wendler would find it in the new apartment.

Ms. Roberts’s efforts won over Mrs. Wendler. “She did things I never would’ve thought of,” said Mrs. Wendler. “She was just perfect.”

Printed in The New York Times Dec. 30, 2010

Are You in Control of Your Stuff?

Christine Smart — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:14:31 +0000

A gentle reminder that sometimes our “stuff” controls us! Please take some time and look around your home, check your closets, drawers, end tables, night stands, the junk drawer, etc. Take one area at a time, pick up an item and ask yourself: Do I love this? Does it bring me pleasure? Do I keep it here because I use it? Or is the item here because I don’t know what to do with it, it’s useful and I might need it someday? If you answer “yes” to the later two questions please consider donating it to your favorite charity.

If you let stuff control you and put off decisions you will soon find yourself overwhelmed. The things that are “worth something” but you don’t use will bury the items you want to use and enjoy. It sets up a perpetual cycle of “I can’t find……” , “Have you seen my…..”, “I need to go buy another because I can’t find the one I had”, etc.

Set yourself free and make a few decisions each day to tackle the things that you let live around you.

When we keep bringing things into our homes and don’t have a place to put it we end up burying the things that mean the most to us. The possessions that do bring us joy and good memories get lost in the clutter and often damaged in the bottom of the pile. As you lighten your load at home your will lighten your spirit as well.

One of the problems with parting with our stuff is the difficulty of disposing of unwanted items. Most towns limit trash to one bag or can and additional bags must have pre-purchased tags. Keep a few tags on hand and try to get rid of the clutter.

Clutter seeps into our homes a little at a time and it can leave the same way. Don’t get overwhelmed with the big mess you see but tackle each area a little at a time.

For a more detailed plan please visit www.flylady.net.

Legacy Table for House of Hope Banquet

Christine Smart — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:50:55 +0000

Hidden Treasure for Independent Living

Christine Smart — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:15:35 +0000

I had the opportunity today to visit Peony Park Apartments in Cedar Rapids. This is an independent living apartment that rarely has openings due to residents staying long term. It’s tucked unexpectedly on the Northwest side of town with a park like setting behind the building and prairie grass preserve being established to one side of the property. Looking out the back you would think you were miles from town.

There are a few steps, but it is independent living. Each unit has it’s own top of the line stack washer and dryer, apartment sized stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. The unit I visited is a 2 bedroom, 900 sq. ft on the lower level, which means it has patio doors that open to the lush back yard with room for patio furniture. Large bedrooms, bath and a half, large living room and dining area. I can not say enough about how clean the apartment and common areas are – pristine! The maintenance person has been with Peony Park for 10 years and very reliable. This unit was freshly cleaned and painted before being put on the market for renting again.

I was extremely impressed with the clean lobby where the residents have their own mail boxes and cupboards for packages that might arrive. How clever is that! Garage rental is required to keep parking lot free for those that have visitors. Who doesn’t like having their car in the garage? Price for the 2 bedroom unit with garage is $750/month.

This is an excellent choice for those who are downsizing but don’t want to invest in a condo or move to a retirement center. Potential renters can have control over their independence but freedom from yard work and home maintenance.

Peony Park Apartments

4600 Johnson Ave. NW

Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52405

319-396-4916