MY BIZ: Designing Moves helps people downsize

Family members battling over parents’ treasured keepsakes happens a lot in books and movies. Christine Smart has found real life usually doesn’t work like that.

“Family heirlooms are really tough because a lot of times the family doesn’t know the story as to why they are important,” Smart said one recent morning. “Mom or Dad wants them to have it, but they just haven’t heard the stories. That’s kind of sad.”

Smart often encounters such stories while helping older Iowans and their families navigate the downsize-and-move process through her Marion-based Designing Moves business. The business grew out of her own family’s experience in the mid-1990s.

“My mother-in-law and father-in-law desperately needed to move, in Ohio,” she said. “I promised my mother-in-law I would spend the summer there with my kids and move them. When we got back, my grandparents needed to move.”

Smart, 59, grew up near Ames and moved to Cedar Rapids after high school.

“I moved here to go to Kirkwood for interior design and didn’t leave,” she said. “I met my husband, and we stayed here and raised a family.”

Starting a business

Interior design led Smart to work for a local furniture dealer, where she heard stories similar to her family’s.

“I started to see people coming in and telling me they had to move and they needed to get smaller furniture,” she said. “Their spouse was ill, and it was so overwhelming. I kind of knew how to do this.”

Research led Smart to the National Association of Senior Move Managers. The organization sets professional standards and practices for the industry, including requirements for liability insurance and ethical practices.

“I trained with one of the founding members,” she said. The association certifies just 60 of its 1,000 members nationwide as A+. Designing Moves is its only A+ agency in Iowa.

She opened Designing Moves in 2008.

Floor plans

Designing Moves’ staff of nine starts with visits to the home of the person who’s moving and to their new home.

“One of the first things we do is make a floor plan,” Smart said. “We measure where they’re moving to, and we measure the furniture they’re going to take and get those pieces situated. Then we start getting into the closets and drawers.”

Smart routinely works with families whose children live out of state. Staff take photos of every room to account for furniture and other belongings and to help decide what to keep.

“We usually talk to (families) to find out if there’s things that they’re looking for,” Smart said. “We take a lot of pictures. They always have a folder of items of interest.”

The process may uncover valuables families didn’t know about.

During a recent job, she said, “we found savings bonds that had been forgotten about and left in a closet. We found cash. We always take a picture of it and send it to the family and let them know what we’ve found.”

Get an early start

As with many major life decisions, getting an early start is key to a move’s success. A six- to nine-month lead time is ideal.

“Sometimes we’ll get a phone call that says, ‘We’re closing on our house this day, and we need to move,’ ” she said. “Those are very difficult. They’ll forget things in the house, and you don’t have time to go back and get them.”

For the move itself, or estate sales that may be needed to clear out the old place, Smart refers families to movers and specialists who have passed background checks.

“We stay in our lane,” she said. “We’re not movers, but we work with movers that have employees who are vetted that we know we can trust around our clients’ stuff. We’ll oversee the entire process. We’ll oversee the packing, and we do the unpacking. We can hang pictures and make sure the furniture gets all in the right place.”

Staff also work closely with nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.

“The communities like to know when the move’s happening,” Smart said. “We try to keep them informed of what’s going on.”

Relationships

Helping families through an emotional time often leads to long-term relationships.

“I have some clients that we moved years ago, and we still see them,” Smart said. “We’ll go and organize and switch out their holiday pillows and bring the other ones in. Just do whatever needs to be done to make that client make their little haven all right.”

Whatever the move, a good day at the office comes “when we finally get a house emptied,” Smart said. “We just did a two-week turnaround on a house, and it was nice to get to the day where we’re sweeping out the garage.”

Know a business that should be considered for a “My Biz” feature? Let us know by emailing mary.sharp@thegazette.com.

  Buy Photo

  Buy Photo

  Buy Photo