What I Wish I’d Known About Moving My Parents Into Retirement Living

I was working with my parents to move them into an assisted living facility this past fall. I looked, and looked for some good resources on this process and really didn’t come-up with much even though this is going to happen to the majority of us (or our parents) at some point. Today I’m going to outline some steps you need to take on this journey, along with some pitfalls we found.

As a note, this was terrible, horrible, emotionally hard and even worse for my parents. We made it through but it’s a lot and if you’re embarking on this journey with your parents I give you a hug in advance. Solidarity my friend. you’ve got this.

Where Will They Go?

The biggest question is where will they go? For my parents their giant 6,000 square foot home just got to be too much. Taking care of any issues, managing the yard, cleaning it — even with the help of a housekeeper, a gardener, it was just too much.

I’d recommend to be sure to verbalize the WHY before you start on this process — and try to focus that as you move through these painful steps. I knew our why was worth it (but I often had to remind myself of that).

My dad is still great though. He still manages, he drives (safely), and is able to navigate the home just fine. My mom has some mobility issues due to some broken bones and hasn’t been super able to contribute a lot to the upkeep of the home in the past few years.

My dad was super overwhelmed by it — so that was our why. It was time to downsize and simplify.

At this point you have a few options:

An Apartment: This is a good option if the house is just too much and they want to downsize. However, in looking at this option we felt like it would only be a good fit for them for a few more years, and then they’d need to do this process all over again. They wanted things a bit more permanent.

Nursing Home: Nursing homes provide health care 24/7 for the patients. My mom needed to be in a nursing home for a bit (I’ll talk more about why in a bit). However, the pricing can be a lot. She was in a rehab center, which was $500/day ($15,000/mo) although they did have the option to go to a $250/day ($7500/mo) facility that was not rehab. Since it was a short term stay and she already knew the people at the rehab she stayed there — but this is pricey if you’re looking at a long-term stay with that.

I honestly had NO idea what pricing would be like — which is why I’m including the pricing here for what I found out. This is based in central Utah prices in 2024. I’m sure it’s based on location and what type of care you want. I am sure there are cheaper homes, but that was the pricing they wanted. Please just take the pricing as a guide for you, not as what it will be in your area.

Assisted Living: Assisted living mostly just provides what you need. The ones we visited did have residents with a “button” they could call for help at any time (aka, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up). They have CNA’s on staff, and likely nurses to get your pills to you if you need it.

However, it is tailored (and priced) to your needs. My dad needed very little help (although there is a medical fee just for being there, even if you can do your own pills, activities of daily living etc).

They also have activities and meals provided. These do seem to vary. The rooms also seemed to go from a studio up to a 2 bedroom apartment (some with even two bathrooms, which my parents strongly wanted). The pricing on this for a 2 bedroom apartment with some assistance for my mom was about $7-8k/month. So, clearly way less than a nursing home, but still quite a bit. Clearly, you could go cheaper with a less-nice home, less medical care, etc. But that’s the price we got from most places.

If you’re considering an assisted living or know which one you want to go to I would 100% get on the waiting list even if you’re just fine at your home. These can be lengthy, and they keep you on the list as long as you want, often for no or a nominal fee.

Independent Living: I honestly didn’t know about these or what they would offer. I mean, aren’t we all “independently living?” I would say to think of it as an apartment (the inside looks just like a hotel or a cruise ship) with some medical care if you need it.

My dad found the people here to be a bit more “with it” than people at assissted living. In general it is much more like an apartment building with just older people in it. Most of them are functioning just fine on their own, but are grateful to have help if needed. Some do need help, so there is a range of fuctioning, always. I really think this is the reason my dad picked the spot he did — he didn’t want to live with old people…. and this was less so.

So, your base rate for this is just to live there, get meals, participate in activities, get rides, etc. Everyone there pays the same base rate based on their apartment size.

They do have a CNA service there (run by a separate company) that you can get help from if you want it. I have friends who’s parents have died in this independent living facility and were very happy with the care they got there through the CNA agency.

Also, my mom is getting some home health services there, now that she’s home (and those are paid for through Medicare/her insurance). This is what they ultimately went with and it’s about $5,000/month for their 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment.

While we’re on this topic, check out my post on how to make a will & a living trust (and I held my dad’s hand through that process as well).

Downsize Your Life & Pack

Once you have an idea of where you’re going (or at the same time) it’s time to start downsizing your items and pack.

Guys, I can’t tell you how overwhelming this was for both myself and my dad. They were going from a 6,000 square foot house (with a TON of storage) into a 1,100 square foot apartment with very little storage.

They had lived in their home for 30 years and had a great life, and my mom loves Amazon. While we had gone through lots of items with my dad in the past years to work on having less, we hadn’t really made a dent in it. There was a lot to go through.

For us, we just got boxes at the local Uhaul place, and got the bins around the house and started boxing up what was going to:

• The apartment
• A small storage spot where things they didn’t need day-to-day

I tried to use cardboard boxes for things going to the apartment, and plastic tubs for things going to the storage closet. I wasn’t always successful, but I tried. 🙂

Who’s Going to Help?

I wanted to give a shout-out to figuring out who’s going to be on this team as you move forward.

My mom wanted to be on the team, but was in a rehab facility (that is a whole other story and I’ll give a few thoughts on that in a bit). My dad was still very able and interested in going through the items as much as he could (he is 84 — my mom is 78). I have a brother that lives in that town and while he wasn’t super able to help out, my sister in law was willing (and helped out a lot), and my nieces came by now and then.

I don’t live in the same state as my parents, so I flew-up a couple of times to help with this process, and devoted myself to it entirely on those stays.

It was REALLY overwhelming for me. It was a HUGE amount of work and I really had to set boundaries for myself about what I could help with and when I needed to stop (and we needed to hire out).

I also had to get clear that I couldn’t “make” someone come help out if that wasn’t something they wanted to do. So, I did what I could and we had to just make do after that.

It’s really important to think what you can hire out, and can not hire out in this process. For us, someone needed to help my dad pack up room by room with him. I guess you can hire that out, but having family do that part was MUCH easier/cheaper. However, hiring out other things made more sense. For every family that will look different.

Storage Facility

It can be really tempting to get a really large storage unit and just move your treasures over there to deal with at another time. I was really grateful that my dad didn’t see this as a good idea.

I think you have to find a balance between throwing so much out that you find that you’re missing things you actually did want/need vs just pushing off a task that is going to have to get done.

Ultimately my dad has a storage unit (the size of a small closet). It has a regular door and holds maybe 6 stacks of boxes in it. It is mostly memorabilia, but also some items that my mom can’t use right now due to her broken ankles. It seems to be a nice balance between saving too much, and losing things that you really do want to keep and go through. We got one that’s pretty close to his apartment, which is nice.

Estate Sale

You’re probably thinking — Hilary — what about all the rest of the stuff. And I got you. This is where we figured we needed to hire someone to come clean-out the house.

Let’s really quickly talk finances. My parents didn’t have a giant need for the money out of the things in their home. While we can always use extra cash they were aware that this was going to require some money, and the big money would come from the sale of the home — rather than the items. If you’re needing to pinch every penny, this is probably not the way for you.

We vaguely looked into a charity that would come clean out the house and distribute/sell items for those in need. We didn’t get super far into this research. It seemed like we might need to coordinate a few of them to get all the items out of the house and manage it.

We ultimately decided to look further into estate sales. I looked up one and called her, and my dad said that was the one we were going with.

Do I wish that we had talked to a few others? Yes, but my dad was in the simplification mode and I went with it.

So….

How do estate sales work?

I ended-up calling a few other ones due to the person we went with being a bit to aggressive initially and this seems to be the way it’s done across the board, at least in Utah.

They take a percentage. I think this based off of how much they will have to do with the items in the house. For my parents they did a 50/50 split. Some do a 60/40 split — them getting 60% if the house is more like a hoarder that they really have to GO through to find sellable items, or them getting 40% if there isn’t too much, but still a lot of good items to be sold.

Once you think they’re a good fit for you, you enter the contract with them. While I felt like the contract was pretty solid, I later found a lot of vague areas (and things she somehow just changed or knew wouldn’t be the case and still went with it).

You don’t enter the contract until all the items you need from the house are out. So, we went into contract about a week after my dad moved into the new apartment. That gave him some time to go back to the house and make sure that there wasn’t anything he wanted.

Our estate sale women was very aggressive about this. we had tagged a couple of items that needed to stay or my niece was coming to pick up and somehow the tags were removed and she was really upset that those items would not be included. I’m not talking big things, but she was very clear and fiercely protecting that part of her contract.

Once we were in contract it took her about 3 weeks to sort through the items and plan for the sale. The sale ran Thursday-Saturday and was open from about 11a to 7 pm or so.

I wasn’t in the state when this sale happened, but my family went back at the end and felt like she had sold very little of what was there. But, then she has contacts that then probably come back and take items at a much lower cost.

For instance, none of the couches had sold during the sale, but I would guess she has a “couch guy” who will come get them at a lower rate to just get them gone and make a little cash.

I think it’s REALLY important to be very realistic about what your items are actually worth. While my dad did pretty well at this it’s hard to see items you bought for thousands be sold for less than $100. It’s definitely a reminder that we love our things, but they aren’t ultimately worth much.

The Clean-Out

When you sign a contract you sign one for the actual sale of items. Once she calls the estate sale “done” (which isn’t for a few days after the actual sale finishes) — what happens with the rest of the stuff that didn’t sell? That’s the clean-out.

My dad had the option to pick to pay $650/truckload for items to be taken to charity (a local Goodwill-esque place) or to the dump. Or, he could pay just $3,000 as a total cost for the clean-out.

He chose to just pay $3,000 because they have a lot of stuff, there are a lot of stairs and he didn’t want to have to think about it anymore. It was easier to do the bulk total. I honestly have no idea if this would’ve been cheaper, but mentally it helped.

Net Estate Sale

So, with a house full of fine quality furniture and lots of items that should’ve brought in good money. He netted $5,000 after the sale/clean-out. Meaning she made $16,000 on the sale. He made $8,000 from that and then she took $3,000 from it for the clean-out and he got $5,000.

Let me stress that we all think we have items of fine quality in our homes, but in reality the effort to take those items out of the home is a lot. Trying to sell them is tough.

Could he have made more with Facebook Market Place/Classifieds? Maybe? But, again — I’m not in-state, he didn’t have the effort in him. This was our best option.

And ultimately, even if he would’ve made like $10,000 more it wouldn’t really have made a huge difference in his overall finances.

Moving

Ok, let’s back it up a bit and talk about moving into the independent living facility. They actually had a moving company they recommended. It was a small mom-and-pop type machine and I have to say the guys they sent out were saints. They were so kind to my parents and did a great job.

It was an hourly job and was about $300/hour I believe. Well worth it though. My parents have very heavy furniture. Worth every penny. I think we paid about $3,000 to have them moved.

Honestly, I bet we could’ve found other movers that might have done it faster/cheaper but these guys were great, very kind and thorough in their jobs. Appreciated them.

We went through and tagged all the furniture that was coming with bright post-its and I would go through rooms after they’d gone through them to make sure that everything was taken.

I had boxed-up the stuff that was supposed to go to the apartment, so it was pretty clear that the stuff thrown in corners was for the estate sale, and the stacks of boxes were going out.

Pro tip: Have the movers take everything they possibly can. Even if that’s odds and ends at the end. My dad had a few things he was like — oh, we’ll take that. Such a mistake, we should’ve had them take it all. Trying to move into an inner apartment is a lot different than moving into a home like I had done on my own as you have to weave through hallways each time, etc. Anything you see that needs to go — have them take it, you’re paying them for that!

The Reality of “The Apartment”

My dad had a blueprint of the apartment that he clung to as we decided what was going to the apartment and what wasn’t. We measured everything and had it fitting nicely.

We then found-out those were the measurements outside the apartment — so when you take off inches for drywall, etc — we were left with much less than we had anticipated.

This meant that less was able to come than we had anticipated.

To the extent that we actually had to have the movers take some furniture back to the house.

This is tough. He was disappointed and felt his efforts futile. I tried to just be a sounding board, and not take it personally that we hadn’t accommodated for that.

It is REALLY hard to get rid of 80% of everything you own in one fail swoop. It’s hard as the child to watch those special items be sold. I’m sure that it is even harder as the owner to watch things that you once really loved need to be given to someone else. I want it to be really clear that this is a very physically, and emotionally taxing process. No area of your heart or body won’t be affected by this.

Selling

We had arranged an agent to sell the home about the time we were picking out their next spot to live. They had one in their neighborhood that my dad was wanting to use.

I looked up reviews and she seemed great.

In this market it can feel tempting to try to sell the house on your own or with minimal assistance, but this was something I am really glad we spent the money on. My parents were questioned by a LOT of people in their neighborhood about them just buying the house outright. It was really nice to just send them to the realtor.

Yes, they are taking a good chunk of change — but you really have to think about what type of bandwidth you have to deal with all of this. Again, the whole question of what you really need to do and what you can hire out is paramount in this process!

I should also say that I only have one brother, if you had more kids working on this you might be able to have one in charge of selling the house, one for the estate sale, one for movers — etc. I’d never longed for more siblings than I had during this move. 🙂

I wanted to also make a note on a special situation we were in — in that my dad was home, but my mom was not…..

Downsizing While In Rehab

As I said, my mom wasn’t home. I knew this was tough for her.

She had no control over what was going on — or frankly, what was being taken to her new life or left behind.

I did quite a few video chat meetings with her where we went through her clothes together. I also did a walk through of the house with her where she could tell me what sentimental items she did or did not want to take (I should note that if I’d guessed on these, I would have been wrong).

I tried to give her as much control as I could. It was a lot of work, but I am hopeful she appreciated it.

I will also say that I tried to give her more control at the expense of my own mental health sometimes. I wish I had been a bit more clear on my boundaries about what I could or could not do. How I might need some time to myself rather than waking up at 5 and working until I died at 7 pm. 🙂

So, what would I…..

Do Differently?

I asked my dad this question, and most of his thoughts were surrounding just having less.

Less Stuff

I will say that when I came home I am energized to clean out my OWN house so I’m not having items taking up space (and energy) that we don’t use. It’s a great reminder to buy less.

Find the Best

I wish we had researched a bit more on estate sale places. I sort of get the feeling they’re all a tiny bit shady (kind of like pawn shops). But, we went with the first one we met out of simplicity, but it seemed to make the process harder (like, when she called me very angry that I’d had the home re-keyed….???? I had not, they just didn’t use the key right).

Start Early

While my parents had thought about doing this for about 3 years prior to actually doing it, they hadn’t taken many steps towards deciding what would be best for them.

I think I wish we had toured some assisted living spots with my mom before she was in rehab and we had to make it happen.

I had broached the topic prior, but was shot down. Life goes on. It’s tough, I get it.

Timeline

In my mind I wish we had taken a bit more time. However, my dad really wanted to be settled in assisted living before my mom got home from rehab, and he was hopeful he’d be able to sell his house before the end of the year.

Let me give you an idea of the timeline:

• July 1st: My mom falls and breaks both ankles because she is septic from a previous ankle fracture
• My dad realizes that he needs to move to assisted living
• July 3rd: My family comes-up for a pre-planned stay. Many surgeries for my mom ensue this week and I spend countless hours at the hospital losing my mind. We tour a few assitsed livings.
• End of July my dad decides where he wants to live, he starts to make some efforts to pack
• August 1st I come for my first visit and really start packing him up as much as I can
• August 10th I come back for a second visit, we get what is moving packed up and moved.
• August 17th Dad signs for the estate sale
• Sept 19th’ish the estate sale starts
• Sept 27th the house is cleaned out by the estate sale people and turned over to realtor
• October 7th, house is staged and up for sale by realtor
• October 12th, they accept an offer on the house that will hopefully go through, should close November 7th.

They clearly priced the house right. My dad did not feel like it was worth his time to let it sit on the market, if he was going to make an extra 20k or so. Again — money wasn’t his biggest issue, which is a real blessing.

I will say that it was sort of nice to not be agonizing over this for weeks. I had a lot of anxiety about the process — that we’d leave something behind that they need.

While I still have that anxiety it is slowly settling….

Ultimately, it was nice to get it over and done with quickly.

In the End….

Are my parents happy where they are?

Sort of? But, not really. They miss their things, they miss being in a neighborhood with children.

But, they’re getting used to their new life.

They like the simplicity of their life. My dad appreciates he doesn’t have to prepare meals anymore and can have someone drive him to his eye appointments.

There are always pro’s and con’s.

We’re actually planning to go up after Christmas, and I’m not sure exactly what that looks like. We’ve always stayed at their house, so now we’re in a hotel…. It’s just different, and we’re going to have to find our new normal.

So, that’s my story. I’m not saying I am an expert, but I just didn’t have friends who’d been through this and found a lot of “sales” online as I was searching for information.

Did you find this helpful? Feel free to tell me in the comments, or ask questions. Again, I’m not expert — but I try. 🙂