Anna Calderwick
Cover of Moving an Aging Parent: Planning the Move, Organizing the Family and Helping Your Parent Settle In, by Anna Calderwick, from the Family Transition Guides series.

A Family Transition Guide

Moving an Aging Parent

Planning the Move, Organizing the Family and Helping Your Parent Settle In

By Anna Calderwick

A practical guide for the family member who is organizing a parent’s move: what has been decided, who is doing what, what to bring, how to work with movers, and how to help your parent settle into the new home. It organizes decisions and information; it does not give medical, legal, financial, tax, real-estate or care-placement advice.

Family Transition ToolkitView sources

About the book

Its aim is to show you the shape of the whole move before you are asked to act on any part of it.

The chapters move through a parent’s move in roughly the order the work happens. Each one explains what needs to happen at that stage, why it comes where it does, which decisions belong to it, and what can safely wait.

This book is written for whoever is organizing the move. It may be an adult son or daughter, another relative or a close friend. The move itself, though, is your parent’s.

The book does not stop at move day, because the work does not stop when the truck pulls away. The old home still has to be emptied, cleaned, handed over and closed. The new home has to work, practically and personally, for the person living in it.

The road ahead

CLEAR MOVE

The book follows a nine-stage roadmap called CLEAR MOVE. Its value lies in the order it suggests, because that order reflects what each stage needs from the one before.

It was created for this series as a way of organizing the work; it is not a clinical or industry standard. The stages form a sequence, but not a rigid one.

The first four stages are about understanding before acting.

  1. Confirm the transition

    Establish what is actually happening: what has been decided, what is still being considered, what your parent wants, and which questions remain open.

    • Chapter 1 Understanding the Transition

  2. Lay out the destination

    Understand the place your parent is moving to: its space, its rules, what it provides and how the move itself has to work there.

    • Chapter 2 Understanding the Destination Before You Downsize

  3. Establish roles and decisions

    Agree who is responsible for what, how the family will keep one another informed, and how decisions that stall will be resolved.

    • Chapter 3 Organizing the Family

  4. Allocate belongings and actions

    Set a timeline and work through the home, turning each decision about belongings into an action with a person and a date attached.

    • Chapter 4 Building the Move Plan
    • Chapter 5 Downsizing Without Losing Control
    • Chapter 6 Heirlooms and Family Belongings

The next three stages carry out the move.

  1. Ready the move

    The practical preparation: hiring help and managing costs, arranging documents and changes of address, and making sure the things that must travel with your parent do not end up on a truck.

    • Chapter 7 Hiring Movers and Managing Costs
    • Chapter 8 What Travels With Your Parent

  2. Move with control

    The final week and move day go best when they run from one plan that everyone can see, with your parent’s own day planned first and everything else built around it.

    • Chapter 9 Move Week

  3. Open and establish the new home

    From the first night, the new home needs to work: a bed made up, medications easy to find, familiar things in place and the right people within reach.

    • Chapter 10 The First Night and First Days

The last two stages are about follow-through.

  1. Vacate and close the old home

    Remaining belongings, services, keys and handover tasks all need finishing properly, whether the home is being sold, returned to a landlord or kept for now.

    • Chapter 11 Closing the Old Home

  2. Evaluate the first 30 days

    Check how the move is working from your parent’s point of view, and carry any unresolved actions through to completion.

    • Chapter 12 The First 30 Days

What this book does not do

This is a book about organizing a move. It is not a substitute for advice from the people whose job it is to give it.

It does not tell you whether your parent should move, or what level of care or support they need. It does not determine who has legal authority to act or sign on your parent’s behalf. Those questions belong with your parent and with the appropriate professionals. What the book does is help you recognize those questions when they come up, put them to the right person, and keep track of the answer and what follows from it.

Optional companion

Family Transition Toolkit

Printable and digital companion tools for this book are available here. The Toolkit includes additional copies and expanded trackers for planning, family coordination, belongings, movers, address changes, move week, settling in and closing the old home. The book is complete without the Toolkit.

Both files download directly. No sign-up or email address is needed.

Version 1.0 — 2026. You may copy or print the Toolkit for your own personal use and for use within your own household or family.

Page 22 of the printable Toolkit: Room sorting worksheet.Page 14 of the printable Toolkit: Task board.
Pages from the printable Toolkit
What is in the Toolkit

Page numbers are pages of the printable PDF.

  1. Part 1 Plan the Transition

    • 8-Week Path: week-by-week schedulep. 4
    • 4-Week Accelerated Path: week-by-week schedulep. 6
    • 14-Day Urgent Path: week-by-week schedulep. 7

  2. Part 2 Destination & Fit

    • Furniture fit trackerp. 8
    • Furniture fit tracker: priority furniturep. 9
    • Room layout grid × 4p. 10

  3. Part 3 Family Coordination

    • Task board × 3p. 14
    • Decisions & Open Issues: additional pages × 2p. 17
    • Contacts list × 2p. 19

  4. Part 4 Belongings & Heirlooms

    • Room sorting: destination keyp. 21
    • Room sorting worksheet × 14p. 22
    • Master inventory × 2p. 36
    • Heirloom record (fuller) × 3p. 38

  5. Part 5 Movers, Costs & Administration

    • Vendor comparison: moversp. 41
    • Vendor comparison: other services and bookingsp. 42
    • Move budgetp. 43
    • Address-change trackerp. 44
    • Address-change tracker: more organizationsp. 45
    • Document locatorp. 46
    • Essential items: expanded listp. 47
    • Essential items: practical extrasp. 48

  6. Part 6 Move Week & Move Day

    • Move Week Countdown × 2p. 49
    • Move-day schedulep. 51
    • Move-day schedule: your parent's dayp. 52
    • Room-by-room move sheet × 4p. 53
    • Mover inventory tracker × 2p. 57

  7. Part 7 Settle & Close

    • Room planning sheet: new home × 3p. 59
    • First-days setup sheetp. 62
    • First-Night & Destination-Ready Checklistp. 63
    • Cleaning trackerp. 64
    • Collection schedulep. 65
    • Handover recordp. 66
    • Old home closure checklist: expandedp. 67
    • Old home closure checklist: whole housep. 68

  8. Part 8 Ongoing Digital Trackers

    • The digital workbookp. 69

Sources and updates

The book draws on public information from U.S. agencies and organizations. Current links to each source, and any corrections to this edition, are kept on the sources page.

View sources

Updates

No corrections have been issued for this edition.