Creating calm from clutter. How senior move management and downsizing services in NYC help older adults transition with dignity and peace of mind.

Join the Parkside Team at Compass and Good Neighbors of Park Slope for a complimentary in-person downsizing seminar in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This informative event is designed to help seniors and families navigate downsizing, selling a home in New York City, and planning their next move with clarity, expert guidance, and time for questions.

Downsizers Event

Our clients often cannot understand why nobody wants to buy their heavy, dark wood furniture. And who can blame them, really? They see IKEA furniture and know this furniture is poorly made, that the materials are manufactured, and that it will not last. Their heavy furniture, by contrast, is made to last forever, and the proof is there to see. They still have it.

But the problem is that we sometimes keep things because they seem useful, even if they really are not. It’s possible something was once quite useful but no longer is. And then there are items that always seems to have the potential to be useful but the need for them never seems to come about.

In this post I am exploring this idea that we keep things because we can. Before clients hire us, we meet them in person to discuss their needs and see their homes. I can’t tell you how often we hear, during these visits, the following words: “I just don’t understand how we accumulated this much stuff!” At this point the client will often throw up their arms in confusion. They just don’t get it – how there is suddenly so much to deal with? It didn’t seem like that much at the time.

Are you trying to declutter and get organized? The best way to fail at this is to try to tackle too much all at once. If you say to me: “I’m spending all day Saturday getting rid of stuff” then there’s one thing I know for certain: on Saturday you will not get rid of anything at all.

This is another article in a series exploring the top reasons we keep stuff, according to David Ekerdt, professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. Dr. Ekerdt has spent his career interviewing and studying people, digging into their attachment to their belongings and trying to understand why we love our things so much. He developed this list of the top reasons we keep things:

This is another post in a series exploring the top reasons we keep stuff, according to David Ekerdt, professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. Dr. Ekerdt has spent his career interviewing and studying people, digging into their attachment to their belongings and trying to understand why we hang onto our things so much. He developed this list of the top reasons we keep things: