Organizing and Minimizing with Your Elderly Parents
Death, and the lead up to death, is hard. It can be complicated by a home full of memories. It gets even more complicated when those memories are not yours. It is a very common scenario — elderly parents want to leave these memories to their adult children, but the child is not interested in those items — or at least not in the volume the elderly parent is interested in leaving. This can cause conflict and stress in the relationship.
Often the resolution of this conflict is left to the adult child because the child is, unfortunately, the person in the conflict who is both physically and often mentally able to respond fully to the situation. Additionally, the child is the one who will be left to wade through a home full of memories. As such, this post is written for the adult child.
The process I am going to lay out is designed to help the child in this situation take care of themselves first and then go on to assist their parent. If you are the child in the situation, you may only want to do the parts that allow you to take care of yourself. That is ok if you are there. Parent-child relationships are complicated at their best. You can click here for a checklist outlining this process.
I suggest to start with your own boundaries. Be honest with yourself. Eventually, when/if you are ready, you can share these boundaries with your parent. Ask yourself these questions:
What (if any) space do you have to store anything of theirs?
What is sentimental for you?
How much time do you want to dedicate to the labor of getting rid of items?
Who can you ask for help?
Consider any other past issues that have come up in your relationship. How might those issues play out in this situation?
Once you have examined your boundaries, you may decide you don’t want to go any further. If you don’t want to deal with their stuff at all, congrats. You’ve found your boundary. I hope you honor the clarity about what you want and need in your life. You may want to move to the next step - empathy. But you also may want to walk away from the situation at this point. That is your choice. I hope you feel empowered to enforce whatever boundary you need. You may want to check out what you are legally responsible for after their death, and make a plan for that. Your parent doesn’t have to know any of this information.
Next, summon some empathy. If there is a lot of tension in your relationship, empathy can be difficult, and you may start down the empathy path only to realize that your boundary is to stop here. But if you choose to respond and work through this with your parent, an empathetic stance will get you closer to helping them declutter and manage their home before they pass. Empathy can also help you heal if you boundary is not to respond to the situation.
These prompts can help you build that empathy:
Think of what hold memories for you. This does not have to be an item. You might be someone who doesn’t have a lot of sentimental attachment to items, but maybe a place holds memories or a time in your life. Get in touch with those memories.
Think of lessons that you have tried to impart on to others. These don’t necessarily have to be lessons for a child. They might be lessons you have tried to teach at work.
Think of your parent as a child. Maybe you can picture this. Maybe you even looked like them as a child. If you know any stories from their childhood, take a moment to review them.
These prompts are meant to help you see that you and your elderly parent really aren’t that different. You have memories you love. You have lessons that you both want to impart, and you are really both innocently imperfect beings.
Now that you’ve set your boundaries and activated some empathy, you can really enter into supporting and negotiating with your elderly parent knowing what you need and want from the situation. The phases I’ve outlined below are not necessarily done in one, two, or even three conversations. This could be a long, slow negotiation over months. The goal here is to first seek to understand your parent before asking them to understand you and your boundaries.
Phase 1 Schedule. Find a time that they and you can be focused. Let them know you want some of their undivided attention. Once you have their undivided attention, share with them your concerns.
Phase 2 Listen. After you share your concerns, listen to their stories and stance. This can be immensely frustrating, but the longer you listen, the more likely they are to calm down and work with you. If you need to tap into the empathy you built for them. You can picture them as an innocent child and think about the lessons you want to teach and the memories you want to cherish.
Phase 3 Identify. Identify what the stuff means to them. They may tell you this in a round about way. For example, if they have a lot of books, they might feel like they are imparting knowledge into the world. If they have a lot of tools, they might feel that they have a lot of things to fix or create. The stuff means something to them, and if you can get to what the stuff means you can probably move them to the next step.
Phase 4 Celebrate . Help them find a way to leave that lesson or memory without the stuff. There are ways to leave that knowledge for the world that don’t include the books. Maybe they can record their own oral history or gift their books to a local library or even historical society. Perhaps you can record videos of them with their tools showing how to fix things. If your parent is sentimental, you may want to read about decluttering sentimental items.
Phase 5 Share boundaries. Once you have listened to them and helped them work through these issues, it is time to share with them your boundaries. This phase may be integrated into the celebration phase, but it may also be a separate phase. The most important thing is that you need to make sure they know you are hearing their ideas and memories. If you share your boundaries too early, you risk them feeling unheard and shutting down. You can share the amount of space you have for their items. You can also share with them items you’d like to keep and why they are important to you.
Typically, the more you invest in phase 1 and phase 2, the easier it will be to move through phase 3, 4, and 5.
When a parent passes, a new phase in the world comes around. A new generation takes lead. This transition is hard for both the child and the parent. The process I've laid out here is designed to first help the child care for themselves in this transition by setting boundaries and practicing empathy. Then, the child can assist the parent through listening and celebrating their life.
M.O.M. is here to help you through this process. We can help you with the self care and the negotiation it can take to help your elderly parent minimize and organize their home. Click here for a downloadable check list. Click here to contact us.
