What has been your experience when Clearing out a parent's home

LadyTexan

Greetings all.

I moved my folks into my home with me. Mom (84) has Alzheimer's. I'm noticing cognitive issues with my Dad (86) also. My home was remodeled in 2020 with amenities that may allow them to age in place with appropriate care and oversight.

Their move in with me has been a process, not an event.

• They both physically moved in with me September 2023 when mom was discharged from the rehab hospital after a fall that resulted in a broken leg .
• Their furniture was moved to my home in March 2023. A lot of their accumulated possessions remain in their primary residence (their home before moving in with me).

I am one of the 3 living children. We all live locally. My parent's primary residence is in the same town. I am not the Power of Attorney for either parent, but I play an active role in hands on caregiving and oversight.

My parents, my siblings and I want my parent's home cleared out and sold. I believe a vacant house is a magnet for vandals, squatters and trouble. My dad is attempting to clear their house out himself. He is reluctant to accept assistance from me. He is against hiring a company to handle it. My siblings are not even attempting to assist.

I want to expedite the process. Specifically, I want to bring on the dumpster for the obsolete paper, housewares, clothing. I want to donate gently used items. I also want my dad to disposition the sentimental items as he deems appropriate now.

If I can get this ball rolling,

1. what are your recommendations for the actual clearing out of the structure?
2. Did you hire someone or a company?
3. Did you rent dumpsters?
4. How long did it take? How did you maintain harmony?

Thanks for your guidance.

M1

LT, my brother and I did this when my mother died suddenly in 1997 at age 70. My father had died a sudden death (also at age 70) in 1993. They had moved to this house in 1973, but my mother still had every Christmas card she had ever received since their marriage in 1952. It was quite difficult, because every drawer and cranny contained both junk as well as things that might have sentimental value. It was not harmonious at all for very complicated reasons having to do with her favoring my brother as the older sibling throughout her life; she and i always had a tense relationship. Shortly before she died i had encouraged her to start cleaning some things out and to consider downsizing, and she tartly replied that she intended to leave it for me to have to deal with.

My brother and I also had a tense relationship that deteriorated after her death because she also treated us unequally in her will. He and I would visit the house at different times, and there were very few things I wanted to keep. I don't recall that there was any estate sale, i don't think there was anything of sufficient value to warrant it. Or if there was, my brother may have handled it without my involvement. We ended up hiring a cleaning company to finish the process and had a dumpster parked in their driveway for about two months.

II can only imagine it being more difficult with your parents still alive. I can also imagine it being completely overwhelming for your father, even if he supports the concept in theory.

II don't know if any of this is relevant to your situation, but hiring help was a must. My brother and I both had young kids and worked full time and there was no other way to get it done.

fmb

When my mother turned 85 (in 2022), she quit driving and sold her car. She then hired a real estate agent who managed her entire move into assisted living by hiring movers, contracting with an estate sale agency, and then selling the house. All of this was my widowed mother's idea and on her own initiative. We three kids live from 220 to over 1000 miles away, but my brother and sister were able to visit and help her clean out personal and sentimental items and dispose of sensitive papers at a shredding event. Many items were donated to charities who came and collected the donations. I was unable to travel due to having to care for my DH. We kids were in complete agreement about who got what and supported her decision.

Looking back and realizing that she had suffered a number of serious falls in the years preceding this decision, I think she realized she could no longer take care of herself. She had always said she did not want to be a burden or for her kids to have to take care of her in her old age. She had been my father's sole caregiver during his ALZ journey for many years prior to his MC placement a couple of years before he died. She is now in MC in hospice care with Stage 7 ALZ.

psg712

I moved my mom 400 miles from her home in 2022 to an assisted living close to my home. For about 2 years prior to the move, I had gradually been removing important documents and taking them home, because I was finding them in illogical places around her house, realized she did not understand their importance and that I needed to keep track of them. My sister (also long distance) was aware that I was doing this. We talked through her decline and the difficult decision of moving her over many months. By the time we did it, everyone was on board except for BIL, who still didn't quite grasp her limitations and held onto the idea that moving a family member into a facility was cruel. He has since come around after seeing her continued decline and facing a situation in his own family of origin.

I moved mom with the minimum "stuff" that she needed for the move into AL, all we could fit in the back of a pickup. My sister and I and our families came back to the house 3 months later. We hired an estate sale agent who helped us determine what could be sold (very little), donated, discarded. We took anything of personal significance that we wanted, hauled a lot of old documents to a shredding service, then he brought in an industrial sized dumpster and went to work. He also helped get us connected with someone to do some floor work after the house had been emptied (and all the family had returned to our homes and jobs). In two weeks it was ready for listing on the market - we had signed a contract with a realtor while we were in town. I am amazed and grateful to God that it sold just before interest rates took off and winter set in.

We would never have gotten through this without the estate sale agent. He helped us in very compassionate and practical ways to make the hard choices and get the house ready to sell quickly. We also absolutely would NOT have been able to do this with mom on site. Your situation is both easier (with everyone local) and much harder (with your dad wanting to be involved and in control). My mom did not have capacity to think through the decisions that had to be made, just as she could not distinguish between an insurance policy and a junk mail solicitation. It would have been unnecessarily traumatic for her to witness us taking everything out of her house.

Take whatever you can from all of the stories here and do the best you can for your folks. No matter the details of each situation, it's just hard.

H1235

My mom is in AL with dementia. She does not want us to touch anything in her house til she is gone. My brother has only recently come to the realization that that is not possible. He also doesn’t want to lie to mom. He is a procrastinator and I doubt he will do much to help other than take what he wants. He thinks we should ask mom if we can have specific thing. She may begrudgingly tell him he can have things, but when I have asked about things she says no. I want things addressed, my brother see this as “ram roding things. His biggest concern is that if the house needs to be sold and he will lose his inheritance. He is constantly telling me things he want at her house, then turns around and says he doesn’t want much. Add on to all of that is the fact that mom is a hoarder. We agreed that one of mom’s friends should be able to have some things if she wants. The first day I was at moms house going through things he asks me if I had even called moms friend yet. I told him we need to go through things first. He is jut oblivious. I am biting my tongue a lot. We (I) are just getting started on the prep for an estate sale now. I think I have over 100 picture frames set out on tables. It’s going to be an ugly mess.

My dh family all agreed that everyrhing would be put into storage til spring( she had been in an apartment before her move to AL) and nothing would go to anyone until the estate sale. If siblings wanted something they would purchase it. Money would go to mom. We caught one of his siblings at her apartment with a car stuffed with things. They claimed it was all stuff mom wanted her to have🙄. Only myself and one other sibling boxed up the things in the apartment to go into storage(5 kids). At the estate sale we picked out the things we wanted and paid (on the honor system) again two of the siblings left with full SUV’s and claimed they owed next to nothing. At least with mil she thought everything fit into her AL room an had no clue what was being done. Some how they all agreed not to talk with mil about the estate sale.

H1235

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/212170#Comment_212170

The DPOA was one of the ones taking things. Mil has passed now. The DPOA was not responsible, paid for land line phone and cable tv for at least a year when mil didn’t know how to use them. She told the siblings nothing about her finances. I’m not sure why the siblings put up with it. I guess we put up with a lot to maintain some family peace.