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The Baltimore Sun: Senior move managers save time, frustration

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Check out the article posted in the Baltimore Sun today, Friday 11/4/16 featuring LPR member, Heather Murphy and her services with Abilities Network Move Management Services!

Senior move managers save time, frustration

Asked what she would like to take to her new one-bedroom apartment in a retirement community from her three-bedroom house in Summit Park, Judy Frankle initially answered: “All of it.”

Knowing there was no way she could fit what she had accumulated over 60 years in her new home, she later acknowledged, “I’ve decided, but I don’t know whether I can.”

 The 85-year-old couldn’t downsize alone — she has balance and mobility problems and uses a walker. Her daughter, Marcie Cissell, made efforts to help, but moving a home filled with a lifetime of memories was “way too big of a job,” she said.

Her answer to dealing with the enormity and emotional turmoil: Cissell hired a senior move manager — the Abilities Network in Towson, one of several referred by the retirement community — to do it in two months.

 For older people who have lived so long in one place, shedding so many things is a stressful hurdle. The physical and mental changes later in life contribute to the challenge.

“We have these memories that connect to these little trinkets or art we have on the wall, or photographs,” said John Cagle, an associate professor of social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Downsizing and moving may translate into “losing a bit of your own identity.”

Senior move managers specialize in navigating issues of downsizing. These include culling, selling and donating items; creating a floor plan, packing, unpacking and dealing with condo rules for moving. They can photograph contents of cabinets to re-create the placement of clients’ items, listen to back stories about belongings and, working with movers, have the new digs unpacked by the end of moving day. They are a neutral third party.

Click here to read the full article:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-re-senior-move-managers-20161104-story.html

By: Heather Murphy at Abilities Network