Negotiating My Mom Giving Me Furniture

From "I don't really own any furniture" to my body count of 5 dressers, 6 file cabinets, 3 desks, numerous book shelves, 1 antique stove, 1 12' wide dining room table, and more...writing down the actual furniture made it much easier for me to say "yes you do own furniture."

She uses about 5% of these items. The rest are dead, space-sucking wood so to speak.

Now comes the time to try to identify and get agreement as to which furniture my mom will allow me to take for my new home, the fact that she owes me thousands of dollars notwithstanding.

Even though it seems like I'm writing about an aging parent, in fact she has always been like this. It's just that now the pedal is hitting the metal.

How I Am Communicating With My Mom

First, I am writing down my intentions and goals for our "meeting."

I am going to identify my ideal outcome, how I plan to speak with her, and how I want to get her to agree in writing or on video so at a later date if she claims she didn't agree to something etc. I can point back to the proof.

This is going to take all day. Hopefully I will not net any more grey hair in the process.

We shall see.

The Cost of Assisted Living Versus...

An 80-something woman feeling the strains of aging raved about how her sister has her own condo and gets waited on hand and foot at her assisted living center in Southern California.

I pointed out it probably costs $5,000 - $7,000 for this luxury and that we could hire two men in G strings to help her for less than that.

Then I fed my dad a piece of cake the way you give a sugar cube to a horse. "I bet they don't do that at the assisted living centers!" I exclaimed. Then again, there are a lot of things they would do I wouldn't. But still, it's nice to be able to have such frank and humorous discussions about a non-humorous topic.

The Big Moving Mom Discussion

Mom seems to be excited and open to the idea of moving the house I bought. She has lived in Los Angeles her whole life. In her 80s she is still independent, living alone, going out at night alone, fearlessly taking the bus while bystanders look at her like she's crazy.

There's no stopping her. And why try? We all want to be independent. She is still working too. People also think that is crazy. Especially others her age. Then again there are those who get it, the overly educated, over achievers who want to drop dead with their heads on a pile of papers on their desks. (They are not from the paperless generation.)

While it is Christmas it is the first big day to realistically discuss relocation. I hope to rent a truck and move a bunch of her furniture -- of which she has many duplicates as many of my friends parents do, due to inheritances.

I'm armed with articles reminding me that resistance to giving or selling things usually is due to fear. She needs to be in control.

With all of these challenges, people point to downsizing consultants who make $65 or so an hour. Given it would take an hour to go through less than one box of things, that simply is not feasible. Perhaps I should offer my mom $65 an hour with an incentive to double it with every yard of stuff she disposes of. Hmmm.

Advice?

So Few Options for Relocating Seniors for Those With No Savings

If your parents are aging and still working, you've probably found as I have there are few communities designed for senior living geared toward such lifestyles. All of the magazines about retirement seem to assume that the seniors own homes or have retirement savings OR children to lean on. I can't imagine for how many thousand this is not true.

My mom doesn't golf and doesn't want to golf. She wants to go to the symphony alone, keep working with clients, be out and about going to lectures.

What do we do with our aging population so they can contribute to society and enjoy life as they (and we) age?

Yet she has no money. And she's a hoarder. Senior housing is overcrowded with long waiting lists. Ironically though she has lived in her same town for 50 years she is on equal par with the hundreds of people from all over the state who can apply for this affordable housing.

For years now my siblings and I have wrestled with "what to do" with her. Of course she didn't want to move. Now she has to.

I am told that when seniors move to completely new areas they can get disoriented quickly leading to senility.

I created this blog as a project to chronicle my investigations and efforts to downsize, move, and establish my mom in a place for the 5, 10 or who knows 20 years in the rest of her life.

If you are in a similar situation I hope you will follow and contribute.

We are in California. I am interested in possibilities of creating senior communities or buildings for "mentally active" parents with children who have a bit of money but not a lot.