aging & wellness
the upsides of
Downsizing Meet three local residents who found help to feel good about letting go By A nna-R hesa Versol a P h otography by J ohn Mi chael Si m pson
emand for professional organizers and senior move managers is accelerating as the baby boom generation fully retires and downsizes. “It’s the silver tsunami,” says Elizabeth Hirsh, founder of The Downsizers, the largest senior management team in the areafa and one of the Triangle’s leading professional home organizers. Back in 2016, Elizabeth found herself, in a single year, moving seven different family members’ belongings due either to death or illnesses within four states. “One of the very first projects was when my husband lost his mom and brother in a very short period of time,” Elizabeth says about helping liquidate their estates in Pennsylvania. Then, she moved her mother, who was experiencing physical challenges, into an assisted living facility in Florida. “That was pretty significant to downsize because she likes her things,” she says. Next, Elizabeth stepped in to help her father, who was dealing with dementia. Soon, other family members called on her to guide their own transitions. “It was a learning year,” she says. “When you’re doing it for the first time, you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re just figuring it out on your own. I had no idea this industry existed, or I would have hired them in four states.”
PLAN. SORT. PAC K. SET T L E.
By September 2017, Elizabeth created a business model with four distinct phases applicable to most transitions. In March 2018, The Downsizers opened for business with three employees. Today, they have 25 full-time employees ranging from project managers and design specialists to support staff, repair crew, warehouse managers and more. The company has a fleet of vans and a 2,800-square-foot warehouse in Chapel Hill with all the supplies needed for any project. In the past five years, Elizabeth says the company has completed more than 1,700 downsizing and senior moves. Their company provides its staff with ongoing training and resources, plus certification for special services, like photo digitization, dementia moves, senior moves and most recently, hoarding disorder management. The downsizing business spawned two sister companies – The Consignors, which launched 114
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July/August 2023
Carol Buxton and Bill Buxton at The Cedars of Chapel Hill.
in March to manage online estate auctions, and The Shuttle Movers, which began in December to manage careful transport of items destined for other homes, donations or disposal. Elizabeth says on average, a 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot single-family home yields up to 16 bins of memorabilia, such as photos, albums, documents, diplomas and awards. The company works with about 60 local companies and nonprofit organizations to recycle or repurpose as many items as possible to avoid adding to landfills. During the pandemic, she says they were turning away 10 projects a week, but business has returned to a normal pace. Smaller projects, like moving someone from assisted living to skilled nursing, usually takes one or two days to complete while longer projects, such as hoarding disorder cases, might take four years. One example was an estate liquidation project that included a 7,000-square-foot home of a deceased couple who had lived in it for 60 years. “Can you imagine how much is in the home?” Elizabeth asks. “You need a team of people to get through that, and sometimes [the home] is already sold and we have a deadline of 30 days out. It can be very tight timelines that are massive projects. Or, it might be a one-day move where we’re going in and making someone comfortable because we know they will probably pass in the next two to three