OpiniOn Specialized moving services help seniors

Dear Savvy Senior, Can you recommend any businesses or services that specialize in helping seniors downsize and relocate?

I need to find some help moving my mother from her four-bedroom home – where she’s lived for nearly 50 years – to an apartment near me.

Overwhelmed Daughter

Dear Overwhelmed, ences from previous clients and check them, and check with the Better Business Bureau too. Also find out how many moves they have actually managed and get a written list of services and fees. And make sure they’re insured and bonded.

If you can’t find a senior move manager in your area, another option is to hire a certified professional organizer who specializes in downsizing and relocating. To find one, check the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, which has a searchable database on its website at NAPO.net.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior. org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.

Savvy

The process of downsizing and moving to a new home is a big job for anyone, but it can be especially overwhelming for seniors who are moving from a long-time residence filled with decade’s worth of stuff and a lifetime of memories. Fortunately, there’s a specialized service available today that can help make your mom’s move a lot easier for her, and for you.

Senior move manager

Senior, Jim Miller

To help your mom get packed up and moved into her new home, you should consider hiring a “senior move manager.” These are trained organizers (they are not moving companies) who assist older people with the challenges of relocating and can minimize the stress of this major transition by doing most of the work for you.

A senior move manager can help your mom pare down her belongings, decide what to take and what to dispose of, recommend charities for donations and help sell her unwanted items. They can even create a customized floor plan of her new home so your mom can visualize where her belongings will fit.

Senior move managers can also get estimates from moving companies, oversee the movers, arrange the move date, supervise the packing and unpacking and help set up her new home, have the house cleaned, and just about anything you need related to her move.

If you want to do some of the work yourself, you can pick and choose only the services you want. For example, you may only want a move manager’s help with downsizing and selling excess furniture and unwanted belongings but plan on doing the actual packing and moving yourself.

The cost of working with a senior move manager will vary depending on where you live, the services you want and size of the move, but you can expect to pay somewhere between $60 and $125 per hour or more, not including the cost of movers.

How to find one

To locate a senior move manager in your area, visit the National Association of Senior Move Managers website at NASMM.org or call 877-606-2766. The NASMM is a trade association with an accreditation program that requires its members to abide by a strict code of ethics that ensures integrity. They currently have around 1,000 members across the U.S.

You can also search at Caring Transitions (CaringTransitions.com), which is the largest senior relocation and transition services franchised company in the U.S. They currently have nearly 200 franchises throughout the country.

But before you hire one, be sure you ask for refer-

Burn-out has got to go

The Festival of Wheels gave it another try this year. It seems the attendance has dwindled to much lower levels than when the event was new, 10 years ago. There are a lot of competing car shows this time of year, so it doesn’t surprise me .

This year Goldendale Motorsports Association and ABATE brought back the burn-out, which was tried several times in the past with questionable benefits to the town. This year someone had the brilliant idea to use the old skateboard park as a place to stage the return of the burnout. It was held on the concrete slab, a tempting medium for anyone inclined to bum rubber. Rednecks of many degrees, punk kids or maybe the little old lady from Pasadena.

I personally was left with a bad taste in my mouth and lungs. Even though I made it a point to stay away from the burn-out and was at my home where I thought I would escape the noise and smoke, when the toxic cloud rose from the park and drifted over the Little Klickitat River Park (the swimming pool) on to the kids and families at the pool and on to me while I was sitting on my property. We were contaminated by the toxins in the smoke, and my eyes and throat were imitated, and my lungs filled with carbon monoxide and other cancer causing toxic compounds for three hours.

I think the city of Goldendale needs to rethink supporting burnouts in our park. Next year don’t issue a permit to any group that wants to burn-out. There are places in the county where it could be held, just not in the city please. I hate toxic smoke, and you should too.

On Sept 4 I will be asking the mayor and his administration to make an ordinance forbidding anyone from reckless unsafe burnouts in any ones neighborhood or any street in the Goldendale city limits. I would appreciate some support from like-minded citizens at the council meeting. Let them know how you feel.

Ken McKune Goldendale C

I recently received an updated “Terms for Business and Deposit Account Agreement” from Columbia Bank. I am not in the habit of reading the fine print but for some reason this time I did. I came across an “added” line that I found very concerning. Again, this line is both for personal and business accounts. It reads: “We may refuse to open and account and may close your account at any time for any reason or for no reason at all.”

“For No Reason At All” I particularly found offensive.

Guidelines for Letters

I contacted the bank for an explanation. The answer was essentially that “we wouldn’t do that.” Then why is it in your documents, I asked. The answer was to send me up the chain of command. The second person gave the same answer as the first and then was to have me contacted by some-one higher up. That person has not contacted me after more than a week so I am following through on what I told the bank contacts I was going to do—write a letter to the editor to be sure local folks are aware of how Columbia Bank is choosing to deal with its account holders.

My concern is that a comment as broad as this opens the door for abuse. I have had no difficulties with our local branch and am sorry that the headquarters has decided to take such a hard line. It ap-pears I will need to look for a bank that does not behave in this manner.

Ken Margraf Goldendale

Letters to the editor should be original and comment on an issue. Deadline for letters is noon Monday for the same week’s paper.

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