Family Owned Senior Moving Services
West Valley City, Utah

For most people a move is an inconvenience. For somebody in their eighties leaving a house they lived in for forty years, it is a considerably larger thing, and how the first days go matters more than how efficiently the truck was loaded.

Just-In-Time Moving is locally owned and works across West Valley City and Salt Lake County. Some of what follows is not moving advice, and it is the part that makes the difference.

Photograph the old rooms before anything moves

The single most useful thing you can do, and it takes ten minutes.

Photograph each room as it is: what is on the dresser, how the chair faces the window, which side of the bed the lamp is on, the order of things on a shelf.

Then reproduce it. Not the room, which will be smaller, but the arrangements within it. Familiar layout is genuinely orienting, and for anybody with memory difficulties it is not a small comfort but a practical one.

Finish the bedroom first, completely

Bed built and made with their own bedding. Bedside table on the correct side, lamp, clock, glasses, the book that was there.

A finished bedroom on the first evening does more for how a move is experienced than anything else on the list.

Put the photographs out on day one

Not later when everything is sorted. Framed photographs, familiar pictures on the walls, the clock that was in the hall.

A room with bare walls and boxes reads as temporary, and the feeling of being somewhere temporary is precisely what makes a move hard.

Keep the routine intact

The same chair to sit in, the same mug, the same time for meals, the same television programme. Continuity in small habits carries somebody through a change in everything else.

If there was a routine of a daily walk or a particular shop, re-establish it early rather than after everything is unpacked.

Do not do it all for them

Where somebody is able to make decisions, they should be making them, including slow ones. Deciding where the chair goes is participation in your own life, and taking that over in the interests of efficiency costs more than the time it saves.

Expect the second week to be harder

The first days are busy and full of people. The quiet afterwards is when a move is actually felt. Plan visits then rather than only at the start.

Call (435) 862-3080 or email office@movingjustintime.com.