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?