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Moving house

Oh, crumbs!
6 days ago
  1. My sister is moving in with me after years of living alone. She has collected many things which are of sentimental value to her, but cannot come with her, mainly due to the sheer volume of stuff she has. How can we proceed to downsize her collection and make the move as stress free as possible? On one side she is looking forward to being in my high rise flat and away from a difficult are, but she has already changed her mind once about moving, though she  knows staying alone will not be good for her mental or physical health.
  • 6 days ago in reply to Mark (formerly Spikey)
    Mark (formerly Spikey) said:
    Is storage an option - e.g. from Big Yellow or similar?

    It gets really expensive over time - probably £50 upwards a month depending on size so £600 a year.

    As this seems an indefinite solution for her then I think it impractical, however if she has a plan to sell the stuff then it needs to be weighted up to see if the value of the resale is significantly more than the cost of storage (minimum contract terms need to be checked of course).

    Personally I would use it as an opportunity to declutter - find a way to rank things in order of importance for the long term and work out what will fit, then start planning the disposal of everything else.

    If there are any high value, low volume items then they can be sold off but the low value / high volume items are most likely best given away.

    I've had house clearance companies give me quotes before (when I was moving overseas) and they offer very low values - I ended up selling most and shipping a dozen large boxes in the end which was the best balance.

  • 6 days ago

    Sounds like you need really good storage, maybe get a local joiner to custom make some shelves and cabinets so as she can keep as much of her stuff as possible in the smallest space.

    Maybe get your sister to watch something lke Stacey Solomons, Sort You Life Out, where people who live in overfull homes, stuffed with clutter, are challenged to get rid of at least 60% of it, whilst the team redecorate and create storage solutions. Maybe watching others have this good, difficult and life changing experience will encourage her to let go of some of her stuff and give you some ideas of how to support her.

  • 6 days ago in reply to Mark (formerly Spikey)

    Thanjs for the reply, but we tried storage once and all it did was cost her huge amounts of money and we had to take all the stuff back home again.

  • 6 days ago

    Is storage an option - e.g. from Big Yellow or similar?