Maggie McKay (Host): Welcome to Stoughton Health Talk. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. When your parents need to downsize and declutter, it can be an emotional task, and as their adult children, they may not want the help, but they need it. So how do we navigate that? Today, client service manager and relocation consultant, Alesha Filiatrault will give us some solutions for how to navigate this sensitive topic.

Thank you for being here, Alesha.

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: Thank you, Maggie for having me. This is one that is tough for a lot of people to navigate, so thank you.

Host: Right. What are some of the biggest challenges families face when working together to help their parents downsize?

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: I would say probably the biggest challenges are around expectations. So having different priorities coming into things. So for mom and dad, the parents, it may be about the memories and the meaning of things. And for adult children it may be about their timeline and the things that they're going to need to do and being able to fit that in.

So the to-do list. That sort of thing. So that's kind of where they're coming at it from because they probably have other obligations, whether they're you know, it's a busy career, they've got a family, other obligations, or they might be living elsewhere. So it may be hard to navigate all of that.

And then also just sometimes with the mismatch of priorities can come hurt feelings. If there's maybe pressure to move quickly, or siblings have different ideas about how to go about things; that can compound it as well. At the end of the day, it's not really just about sorting the stuff, it's about navigating roles, responsibilities, and relationships.

So, I think the key to the approach is to act as a team, have open conversations, clear expectations, and a whole lot of patience.

Host: And probably do that before your parent is present, I would think. How can families approach downsizing in a way that honors both practical needs and sentimental attachments?

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: So in the, the Getting Started podcast we talked about working around the things that you love, need, and will fit, whether it's into the space, if people are physically downsizing to a smaller space or in the new lifestyle. So, I think when you're starting with the things that you love and the things that are significant and important and what works; it's kind of a different way of coming at it.

You're not looking at everything in equal standing. You're looking at what you're keeping rather than what you're letting go and maybe coming at it for both sides, both parents and adult children, with that as a common kind of goal; may help ease, into that. But yeah, definitely starting by discussing what's meaningful. So if there's a lot of siblings and maybe having a sidebar conversation ahead of time might be helpful. But I think understanding what's meaningful to your parents is also extremely important. So, when I talk with people, that's one of the things I really try to pull out is what's important. For some people, it's their children getting things, and they can't go any farther in the process until everyone's looked at everything and has said what they want and then maybe they want to do it over again because they, they didn't take enough. So that might be the most important thing.

And maybe it's selling items and getting that top dollar and kind of recalibrating their thinking around what the top dollar could be in today's market. And for some people it's making sure that their items are getting to people who need things. That's significant to them. So the donation process or the re-gifting process is significant.

So it's really important to kind of understand what's important to mom and dad when they're looking at coming up with a plan. Also creative solutions. This is probably the best time for really taking a look at what works for you and your family, which may not look anything like what it looks like in my family.

And then how to use people effectively. So if you have a child that's really savvy at tech stuff, maybe they're savvy so they can create spreadsheets or maybe they're savvy that they can help sell things online. So, you know, kind of look at those things.

Host: And I think respect is a big piece of the puzzle. You have to respect your parents' wishes, and sometimes, adult children think they know more than their parents, but it's not even knowing more. It's just with their wishes and what they want. So, Alesha, what strategies can help divide responsibilities when adult children are involved in helping their parents downsize?

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: As I already kind of got ahead of myself and mentioned, playing to people's strengths, I think is very key here. There are certain things about the downsizing process I love. One of the things I don't like is packing, and that's the same for families. Like, if people are relegated, well, we need to pack up all the china, and that is like the last thing that that person wants to do. They would be great at selling stuff online. It's good to kind of take a look at that. I just kind of wanted to go back a second because one of the comments you made kind of made me remember something.

The respect needs to be kind of all the way around because if children say that they don't want to take something, that needs to be listened to, because there's probably a good reason; they probably don't have the room for it. The cost of getting it to their home might be prohibitive. And it just, it's something that they said no to.

So that can also be something that comes about. My mother was pretty adamant about me taking certain things and, and I wound up saying yes and kind of to my own detriment, to the point where I, I couldn't use a garage for a while because I took so much and it all went in there.

Because I had no room in my house. But I took the things she wanted me to take. I really wish that I could go back and have a more effective conversation with her around that because that probably would've set the tone for all the other conversations and efforts that we had. Let me give some other examples. One of the concerns is, having the child that maybe the sibling that lives closest, oftentimes a lot falls on them. So, you know, one of the challenges is to come up with something that's equitable if there's multiple siblings.

If you're an only child, that's kind of a whole nother matter. But sometimes I see a lot of extended families at this particular time in people's lives. Sometimes nieces and nephews can come and help, cousins, grandchildren, because frankly, sometimes the adult children of seniors are also seniors themselves and not as up for the task as they would've been 10, 15 years earlier. So this can take on a whole lot of shapes and sizes, but, if you have somebody who's remote, then those technical solutions can be helpful; researching donation places and what they will and won't take. Creating that spreadsheet of the inventory spreadsheet.

Going through pictures online to figure out what to keep if they're digital. So there's some solutions there. But then also just being an emotional support and maybe regular check-ins. I have seen people have actual meetings with their families. It feels very formal.

Like somebody has Zoom and so they do a formal virtual meeting. It's kind of fun to watch the senior kind of navigate that, but a lot of us learned how to do that during COVID. So, you know, it's kind of a skill that we can hold onto. There's all sorts of ways of engaging different people in the process, but kind of getting sign off on it, I guess at the end of the day is what I'm, coming to most significantly.

Host: Alesha, are there any creative or unique ways to preserve family stories and memories during the downsizing process?

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: As you might have gathered, I'm kind of a big fan of digital solutions because, let me take a step back. For example, photo collections, photos, slides, recipe cards, my dad's, handwritten letters from World War II to his family members, quilts that people have. Those things could be preserved in a digital format, so, the advantage of that is let's take pictures and slides, for example. Most of us don't have the space to have, what did I inherit? I inherited like 20 boxes of medium sized photos and then several totes of the larger old large format photos. I really do not have the space for that, but I have dutifully carted it around.

So a couple years ago I started to digitize it; kind of during COVID, and I was able to do some of the smaller, like the photos from my childhood and my daughter's childhood. Some of the older ones I took, you know, I have an app that I downloaded and took pictures from my cell phone. There's services out there where you can get a box and you can put all of the photos that will fit in that box and have them digitized, for a certain price. So that's pretty cost effective, for those who don't want to go out and buy a scanner or take that chore on. But it's a format that, now my children can see those things. And a lovely part of that is, on my iPhone, I have facial recognition. So once I put in my daughter's names, then every time those photos came up, it would scan and say, Hey, is this this kid?

Is it this kid? Is it this kid? And you know, I'd say yes or no, and it would help me categorize things and then I can share those photos with my children, even the one that lives in Australia. So she can see that and we can actually kind of join in together and see the photos. You know, there might be some technical things to work out in that, but it's a wonderful format for being able to take something that has a lot of bulk to it into something that may be very useful to future generations.

And then maybe being able to eliminate, you know, some of the landscape photos. In other words, the senior's version of coffee photos in today's young people. So like all the vacation photos that are just scenery that now we can see that. We can just Google it and see what Mount Rushmore looks like.

So, you know, maybe take out those and just keep the ones that are about people and significant events. But then, like I said, we can also do this with, not only the slides, but also things like recipe cards. You know, my family was big and they always had handwritten recipes. One of my favorites is the coffee cake and biscuit recipe that my grandma and her sisters used to make.

 I would feel bad if my daughters didn't get ahold of that, but, sharing one card with the three of them wouldn't even be possible, but with a digital solution that is. So, you can just kind of have fun with it too.

Host: My sister got all my grandmother's recipes, all her handwritten recipes, and well at the time, went to Staples and had books made, like made a recipe book out of all the recipes, she xeroxed it. All these terms sounds so outdated. Alesha, Xerox, Staples. So in closing, what's one piece of advice you'd give to families to make this process smoother and more positive?

Alesha Filiatrault, Client Relocation Consultant: I think just, listening. Most seniors and I fall into this as well. I want my children to know every morsel of my life, and all the memories that we shared while they were growing up. It's interesting because the objects that we have, we keep them because they remind us of something special.

So, maybe, turning on record, maybe they don't, you know, maybe not everybody wants to have a video made of them, but they would be fine with a voice recorder. But maybe capturing some of those stories because it helps us let go a little bit if we know that someone is listening and we are heard.

I don't know. It's not a solve everything, but I think it's a big piece that is part of the reason why it's really difficult for seniors and all of us to downsize because we feel like we're letting go part of ourself. So if we can find solutions that still hold onto that, it makes the whole process easier and it may give those of us who are getting those things something important as well that we didn't know. We didn't know we wanted until we heard it so.

Host: Thank you so much for this useful information, Alesha. It's so helpful because at some point, we're all going to have to go through this, right? So again, that's Alesha Filiatrault and if you'd like to find out more, please visit wellrive.com. That's W-E-L-L-R-I-V-E.com. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library at stoughtonhealth.com for more topics of interest to you. Thanks for listening to Stoughton Health Talk.