As we age, it’s natural to consider downsizing, often for ease of movement around a smaller square footage, sometimes for the purposes of cost saving, and sometimes it is with the intention of moving into an assisted living situation. Whatever your reasons for looking to move, one thing you can now take off your stress list is the move itself thanks to local innovative moving firm, Moves Made Easier. They’ll not only organize the heavy lifting, they’ll also help you plan the move from start to finish so that you’re walking into your new home with everything in its place, ready to be lived in. We sat down with company owners Ted and Debbie Forthofer to find out exactly how it all works.
Moves Made Easier, shared the Forthofers, is what is known
as a senior move management company. “Senior move management,” said Ted, “is a
relatively new part of the industry. It’s a lot less like a traditional moving
company—like a Mayflower Van Lines, or someone like that—and it’s closer to
what a family member would probably do to help their parents when they’re in a
time of residential transition.” Moves Made Easier is with their customers
every step of the way, from planning a move through to when they step through
the door into their new home.
“What we basically are,” Ted went on, “is a project manager that
can do, really, anything that needs to be done before and after the heavy
lifting of the move. What that means is [that we] plan a step-by-step process helping
determine what folks should be moving, and then get all those things packed up.
We hire and supervise the furniture movers, and then we unpack everything and
get it set up, all the way to the point of hanging pictures on walls and
connecting electronics and making sure they work. … We actually go the extent
of taking photographs of china cabinets and book shelves and large-volume
pieces of furniture so that we can set them up and put the things back in them
exactly where they were before they were packed in the first place, which is
really helpful. You’re in a new home and you want to know where things are
located, and they’re right probably where they were in the old home.”
The Challenge of Downsizing
You’ve been collecting knickknacks and clothing and kitchenware and more for years and years, and now it’s time to move to a smaller place. But what to do with all that stuff? Moves Made Easier helps you determine what you’re going to keep and what you’re ready to let go of. “It’s usually easy to tell when you meet someone for the first time,” said Ted, “and just by taking a tour of their home, what their interests are, what brings them joy, what things contribute to their daily activities, [versus] the things that collect the most dust that are maybe even left behind from when they were raising children, or things that maybe they don’t really have as much use for anymore. Once you talk to them, it’s easy to tell what things really mean the most to them and what things don’t.”
Moves Made Easier supports their clients in identifying the
wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and then they take care of what needs to
find a new home. “We ship things—either boxes or furniture pieces—out of town
to family members or friends,” Ted said. “We arrange for temporary storage, we
handle the donations to charities, and we also sell excess household items.”
So, Can I Afford This Service?
Sounds like a premium service, right? It certainly is that,
but the good news is that the cost is more reasonable than you might think. The
company’s services are billed hourly, so you are in control of how many hours
of their time you call in for support. “There are several things we can do to
keep costs down for our clients. … More planning up front—[to avoid moving too
much and having to pay to move some things back out to a temporary storage
unit, then possibly again to their final destination]—saves them that possible
cost in the long run. … Another thing we can do is sell their excess goods for
them. If they have things they don’t need anymore and no family member wants
them and it looks like there’s value in those excess items, we can certainly
arrange for them to be sold.” The money that comes back from such a sale helps
to defray the cost of the move.
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Here at HandyPro, we make your well-being our priority. Our
interview series goes hand-in-hand with that effort, and we hope you find it
helpful! For more information on how we can help you make your home a home for
life, visit us at www.StayAtHomeModificationsINC.com or
call me (Brian Pritchard) at 216-212-7531.
If you’d like to learn more about Moves Made Easier or
schedule an initial consultation with their team, you can contact them at
440-724-8965 or visit them on the web at www.MovesMadeEasier.com.
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