Kris Kircher steps carefully around the things she's sorted out on the basement floor: pots and pans, shirts and coats, a box of Harlequin romance novels, a wooden plant stand.
Upstairs at the house on X Street in Omaha, there's more of it, piled by category under handwritten signs she's taped to the wall. There are blankets and books and dishes and a sizable collection of Christmas decorations that look to be from the 1950s. In the attic, there are children's toys and birthday cards — and all sorts of things one gathers over more than six decades of living in one place.
It's an entire life, or at least the stuff of it, but it's one Kircher had no part in. She's not a relative or friend of the former occupant, a woman in her 90s who recently moved into an assisted-living facility. And that's just the point.
Kircher's business, Caring Transitions, is one of a growing number of companies in Omaha and across the country that specialize in helping senior citizens and their families sort out the details of moving. From cleaning out dresser drawers to organizing estate sales to helping to decorate a new apartment, senior move managers take the lead on work that often leads to stress and family squabbles.
The industry has picked up considerable steam over the last decade. And as baby boomers head toward retirement and beyond, that's likely to continue. In Nebraska alone, the number of residents 65 and older is expected to jump by more than 30 percent between 2011 and 2020.
The National Association of Senior Managers, which was founded in 2002 with 22 members, now has close to 700.
The number of businesses is growing quickly because more families — particularly those who are scattered across the country or the world — are looking to do a better job with major life changes, said Mary Kay Buysse, the association's executive director.
"When someone is told they can no longer live alone, the family rushes in from around the country, tries to downsize a home in a week or two, and decisions are made rashly and with a lot of regret attached to them," she said. "The older adult feels like they are being moved instead of deciding to move."
That difficult balancing act — adult children becoming decision makers and parents forced to give up the places and things they know — is part of the reason Kircher got into the business.
After more than 15 years as a social worker, much of it working with children and families in crisis, Kircher was laid off in July. She was interested in starting her own business and initially considered becoming a professional organizer. She says she's the type who offers to organize friends' closets for fun.
But she was still drawn to the idea of trying to help people through challenging situations. She thought of her own experiences: family members squabbling over who was going to get grandma's silver, a sister-in-law single-handedly clearing out her mother's home after a move to a memory care facility.
Kircher did some research and decided her best bet would be to start Nebraska's first franchise with Caring Transitions, a Cincinnati-based company that now has more than 120 offices in North America. Though she had the experience of working with people, she thought she could use the training and support of a franchise company.
On Dec. 1, she opened for business. In her first month, she hit the ground running.
She has a system, though she's refining it all the time.
After she takes on a new client, she takes a tour through the home and tries to come up with price and time estimates based on what she calls the "clutter level."
Then she digs in, figuring out what's inside closets and cupboards, tucked under beds and lined up on shelves.
"You would be surprised how much one can pack away in the closet," Kircher said. "I go through each and every purse and box and coat pocket to find things."
Sometimes, family members have specific requests. They don't care about the rest of the stuff, but could she find the family Bible?
On one recent job, Kircher was told to look for a handmade rosary. She searched through drawers and found nothing. Finally, she spotted an old briefcase, forced open the lock and dug around in pockets. There it was, inside an envelope marked: "my special rosary."
Sometimes it starts to feel like a treasure hunt, where each box or basket holds the promise of something that could be meaningful to the family — or might land them a small fortune at an estate sale. Other times, it's an exhausting process of sorting out all the things someone has tucked away.
"This is a very person-to-person, really an intimate, relationship," Buysse said. "The senior move manager is going to be in the nooks and crannies of an older adult's home that maybe no one else has been in."
Move managers' service offerings vary, but many help sort out — and get rid of — clients' belongings in a variety of ways. They figure out what the family wants to keep, what needs to be thrown out, what might work at a garage sale or a thrift store and what could be saved for an estate sale.
In the house near 36th and X Streets in south Omaha, Kircher was packaging things together to make them more attractive for sale: holiday decorations displayed together on a tray, pens and desk supplies packaged into a neat bundle.
Buysse said an impartial third party can be crucial during the paring-down process.
"A lot of older adults are under the mistaken notion that their family members actually want a lot of stuff," she said. "They don't. The 25-year-old granddaughter doesn't want her grandmother's Lladró collection" of figurines.
Another important part of the process is making the actual move as seamless as possible, said Sheila Pettigrew, owner of Omaha-based senior moving company Tender Transitions.
Pettigrew has been in the business for 15 years. She said she's seen some changes — senior citizens have more options for housing and most of it comes with far more amenities than the offerings of a decade or two ago.
Though the organization and planning for a move can take time, she said moving out and moving in can be relatively quick. And she sticks around to make sure the client has everything he or she needs, from buying new furniture to putting all of the old things in the right place.
"They can sleep in one place, pack, unpack, and sleep in the next place," she said.
Some move managers have trucks and do the actual transport work, but most contract with moving companies.
Maureen Raynor, an Omaha interior designer, started doing senior moving work about three years ago. She had more and more clients moving into assisted-living facilities or downsizing into smaller homes or apartments and thought she could help with more of the process. She now runs the business, Senior Shift, as a part-time operation.
She's found many people who said they've wanted to move but are overwhelmed with the thought of doing it alone.
"It seems when my clients realize how easy we make it for them, they say: 'Why did I just stay here for the last five years with my spouse gone?' " she said.
Denise Ruby is in her sixth year operating her business, Senior Moving Services. She also provides the full range of options, from organizing and packing on one end to hanging picture frames and shower curtains on the other.
The cost of the services can vary. Depending on the job, the local business owners said the work could run from about $500 to more than $6,000. Some have hourly rates, others by the day or by the service. Buysse said the national average for senior moving is somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 to $80 per hour, with an average job lasting about 15 to 20 hours.
But Ruby said many families find the expense is well worth it.
"People come (to help with the move) from places like California," she said. "And they think about, 'Am I going to be spending my time packing or do I want to spend the little time I have here with my parents?"
Kircher said some clients might have enough success at an estate sale to recoup the cost of the moving services.
And it's also a chance to donate unwanted belongings to charity. When clients want to give away their things, Kircher reaches out to some of her contacts from her former career. She works with a group that provides luggage to foster children who often have nothing more than a trash bag to haul their things from home to home. And she's also helped provide furniture and household goods for groups that work with victims of domestic abuse.
It's a rewarding job, Kircher said.
And taking apart the pieces of someone else's life is also a good reminder of what matters — and what doesn't.
"I've realized I don't have to have the grand house, all the stuff," she said. "Because in the end, that's all it is. It's just stuff."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1543, erin.golden@owh.com
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