...What I learned was:
1) Get your house cleaned out and toss all the junk years before you pass....
Wiser words won't be found about elderly parents.
Seven years ago, we had to move my parents from the house they lived in for 50+ years to retirement community/assisted living/nursing home. The house was not very big but my dad was a hoarder. He would never allow us to throw out anything and he just kept everything, and always added to his stash with "emergency" food supplies like canned goods and boxed items.
It took us several months to clear the house out for sale. I can't even count the number of dumpsters we had to rent. At first, we tried to keep the important stuff and toss everything else, but it was impossible to sort through. I'm not kidding, my dad kept all of the ledgers from the junk store his father set up when he arrived in the US, showing every sale and purchase made from the mid 1940s until the early 1970s. It was interesting at first, then it just became a hassle and everything went to the junkyard.
To this day, we still have bad dreams about having to start over with cleaning that house out. What we should have done in the few years prior to the move was slowly get rid of the junk when my parents were out of the house for the day.
