When should elderly parents downsize?

[Hogwartsian]

My parents are in their early eighties and still healthy and fit. They have a large 5 bed house with a large garden. They are still managing to maintain it, for now. I'm just wondering if there's a point when they should prepare for the day they can't manage it all anymore, and downsize to something more suitable?

Is anyone else in this situation? Or when did your parents downsize?

De-cluttering and death cleaning is probably more important.
Do they have a gardener and cleaner lined up for illness or when it becomes too much?
Can they live downstairs on one floor (spare room, shower room) if unable to use the stairs?
Are they near a bus route, walk to supermarket and GP?

This is essentially what my Dad does my mum died a year ago and they have a large 4 double bedroom semi with a bathroom upstairs and a shower room and toilet downstairs, aa my mum became increasingly disabled they converted their dining room into a downstairs bedroom and live/d on the ground floor.

Legend

I think the potential advantages to downsizing are often outweighed by the disadvantages of moving to unfamiliar surroundings. It can be extremely hard for someone in their 70s, let alone 80s, to adapt. Falls and trips are common when people move because our movement patterns around the home become very intuitive, and that's before considering the social changes - new shops, neighbours etc.

I think people normally leave it too late. People saying that they should leave it until they are ready probably haven’t been through the experience of helping parents who have left it too late. I had to deal with this with both my parents and my in-laws and it has been really upsetting and unsettling for them. By contrast, another relative moved in their 70s, managed it all and thrived in their new home.

so I’d say moving whilst u don’t feel vulnerable and elderly is a good idea

In my, admittedly jaundiced experience, before they get to old. To old to do anything about it other than go on and on about how unsuitable their house is and spend huge amounts of time telling their long suffering children how much help they need to live in their completely unsuitable home. Like I said, I'm cynical. I'm also 60 and looking for a bungalow for me.

My parents are about to turn 80 this year and moved last summer. They lived too far from myself and my siblings and a minimum 4 hour drive each way was too much if anything happened to them.

They were /are in excellent health but it was a very stressful few months as when their house sale finally went through, the whole process happened very quickly and in hindsight probably too quickly. They left behind their friends/ social circle and fantastic neighbours of 40+ years and that has been the biggest adjustment.

4 months down the line they are getting settled but I have left them to find friends which they have done and not rely too much on me as I work full time and to be frank I am knackered!

My mum has said if they hadnt have moved when they did they would not have done it - it was a very stressful time for both of them.

We catch up once a week for supper which has replaced the weekly telephone call.

Did they want to move? Not really. Did they think they ought to move? Yes they did as they were just too far away and it has worked out well. I think a key thing is although they are now in a bungalow they have kept a 3 bedroomed property so they still have space- neither wanted to downsize to a smaller poky place but they've also tackled a bit of the Swedish death clearing so very little for us to clear when the time eventually comes!

I'm 63, DH is 72.

We sold our 4 bed family home about 4 years ago, mainly because it was too big for us & had a lovely big garden that was becoming too much for us to manage.

We learned from my parents who moved from a 6 bed thatched cottage in the country with a huge garden & about 5 acres of paddocks into a 4 bed house in the city. My father badly didn't want to move, but they lived 'in the sticks' my father had Parkinsons & dementia & my mother had a stroke which meant she could no longer drive. Daddy made the move very difficult unpacking boxes that had been packed, arguing over every choice of house to move into. But they had no choice as living where they were was no longer tenable.

When my mother died we spent several weeks clearing my parent's house of 60 years of accumulated 'stuff' that they'd moved from their old house. Frankly it was a mess. They hadn't redecorated in the 12 years that they'd lived there, & after my father died, my mother wasn't motivated to clean. She would tell me off if I cleaned for her accusing me of passively aggressively criticising her for having a dirty messy house - which it was. But all I could do was remove the out of date stuff from the fridge & give the kitchen & bathrooms a once over when I was using them as it was her house &, she was right, I had no right to clean it.

DH & me decided that we didn't want our children to have the same job of clearing out a mess & down-sized.

So when we moved into our 2 bed bungalow we filled 2 skips with rubbish from garden sheds & the rooms & made more trips to the recycling centre & charity shops than I can count.

However, we're having a new kitchen fitted into our bungalow & have identified loads more stuff that we no longer need. I'm talking the family sized Le Creuset casserole, veg dishes, milk jugs, sugar pots etc etc. All going to charity. We've also sold a lot of my collection of Art Deco items & pictures inherited from my parents at auction & on-line websites.

You can't force your parents to do it - it has to come from them.

If they don't downsize for God's sake get POA and all the information you will need to sell their property eventually. Right now! Having a folder with the paperwork for windows, boiler, building regs etc all in one place will be incredibly useful when they either die or get dementia, and leave you with the joyous task of sorting it all out. Trying to cobble this together for a house they have loved for fifty years but then let go to rack and ruin is a giant giant PITA. You will be doing that while dealing with clearing the place- also a nightmare if they didn't downsize and rationalise their belongings.
Choices have consequences... for those of us propping them up.

My dad is 83 and still rattling around in his massive house. I tried talking to him about downsizing but he cannot be bothered with the ‘fuss and stress’
I, on the other hand, downsized a couple of years ago and now have a cosy ground floor flat 😆

Depends on where they live, what their financial means are and if it can be adapted. A house in a suburb with public transport within 5 minutes, local services and fairly flat that could be adapted for single storey living and can afford regular cleaners, fine stay put, if isolated, hilly, and finances stretched I’d be encouraging downsizing now

My parents house can be adapted and we’ve chosen a smaller house now kids are left, it varies

Mine downsized to a bigger more expensive house. 4 bed not 5 but over 3 floors. Madness. They were early 70’s

Maybe they won’t need to. If they’re living in a large 5 bedroom house I assume they’ll be room for a bathroom downstairs? And a reception room could be a bedroom?

We did it at 66 and 70. Mainly because it was beginning to need a bit doing to it and we just couldn't afford it. I was going to carry on working until I was 70 but mobility issues put an end to that.
We sold to one of those webuyanyhouse places for less than it was worth but a lot more than we paid for it. We bought a park home and it's great. We still have a small garden and privacy.

Last child moved out a month before we did so it was a good time to sort the entire house.

If and when they can't manage their home any more. But managing their home might be keeping them well and active so don't interfere. Be ready to help them make any adaptations that might be necessary if for example one of them ends up living there alone, or can't manage stairs or needs extra handrails to get about safely. And suggest in a neutral way that they should get LPA set up before they need it (ie now) because it takes many months to come through.

Mine are similar and I can't imagine they will now. I really think you need to be downsizing in your 70s latest.

I would say that future-proofing and having suitable living accommodation is more important than down-sizing.

You could down size to a smaller property but still find it difficult to adapt to deal with any health issues or disabilities in later life.

A larger property might offer more opportunities to have a bedroom and bathroom downstairs - bungalow style living - and leave the upstairs bedrooms free for other uses - over night carers etc if it came to it.

We did it early 50s, no kids. To a 2 bed fair sized bungalow with a smallish garden. Had watched both sets of parents struggle with houses & gardens too big.
Then we had to do the inevitable clear out of decades of stuff. Seriously my mother's house took 10 skips. 55 bags of clothes to charity, still mostly with labels on. Most of the furniture went to the Sally army. It really didn't look cluttered but all the cupboards were full in a 5 bed house. Plus a huge shed & double garage. Father in law's was similar.
Have to say best thing we ever did. Probably 10 years before we needed to. But so very glad we did. Full declutter so very freeing. We are warmer, smaller bills & can clean whole place in record time, with no arguing about whose turn it is to vac the stairs 😆

My mother did a version of this. She moved downstairs & it meant that the upstairs was effectively a storage space for all her books, clothes, papers (she was an academic & kept all her research papers from 50 years of research). Upstairs there was wallpaper peeling off where damp was ingressing due to a leaky drainpipe, another room had a damp patch where water came in because the roof was leaking. There was sash window that she couldn't close properly & the open bit at the bottom was stuffed with paper & towels. She had mice/rats who'd managed to get in & ate & nested in her papers. It was rather gross TBH.

Would have been so much better if she'd moved into a smaller house or flat that she could manage to maintain, but that would have meant getting rid of all her 'stuff' - easier for her to retreat to the areas of the house that weren't showing the need for repairs & ignore it.

The time is if they want to. My mother is 88 and still lives in the large 5 bed house with large garden that she and my father bought 50 years ago. After my father died 4 years ago she still looks after the house and garden herself, her only concession is to have someone to mow the lawns. Today she was up a ladder pruning her apple trees.

She talks scathingly about people who move to the few bungalows in the village, saying she would hate to live somewhere so small(3 bed detached bungalows), and I simply can't see her moving somewhere like that. Her house could have a stair lift or there are enough rooms to have a bedroom downstairs. She also has a downstairs shower room. I can't see her ever moving and that's fine.

I myself( early sixties) live alone in a large 4 bed house and have no intention of moving either. My son has said if it came to it he and his wife and I could all sell and buy a very large house where we could all live together, but that would be an absolute last resort and I wouldn't really want him to take on that burden.

Do they have to move? My dad has a cleaner and a gardener and says he will get a stairlift if he needs one. I don’t want him to move, it’s a safe area with good neighbours who look out for each other and it’s on a bus route.

Can the house adapt to their needs... downstairs toilet and shower and bedroom etc.

Honestly if they were going to move they would have done it about 5-10 years ago. Moving is a stressful business as is admitting human frailty, so sadly I think the window for a voluntary move has passed.
If they can afford it, I would put your efforts into getting them used to having some paid help for gardening and cleaning. In the case of my DPs they were managing well until the day DM had her fall and since then it’s been hellish. I managed to get a cleaner in, but honestly they could lave done with one for about 3-5 years earlier.

As soon as possible in order not to become
a burden on their "children" at productive age, who are more than entitled to live their own lives.