By Joel Keller
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Like most people who relocate to a retirement community, Kathy Hutzel had to downsize her life before making the move. But the task ahead of her was daunting.

"That’s an understatement," Hutzel chuckled when asked if her old house, in Rutherford, N.J., had a lot of things she needed to get rid of. "I lived in all four floors. I had things in the basement, and of course in the attic it was all storage."

Her new apartment home at Cedar Crest was smaller, which meant less space for unneeded belongings. "I think this is what everybody that moves here is concerned with," Hutzel says. "How do you downsize when you’ve lived in a house for 53 years?" So when she was set to move to the Pompton Plains, N.J., community this past fall, she turned to two people for help: her daughter-in-law and Margaret Semezko, Cedar Crest’s personal moving consultant.

"Margaret came to the house and showed me the plan [of my new apartment home] on paper, and said, ‘You can take this; you can’t take that.’ Then of course, my family and I decided on what to keep and what to leave."

Action plan
The main concern for Hutzel, who taught piano for many years in her Rutherford home, was whether she’d be able to fit her Steinway grand piano. "If I couldn’t bring that I probably wouldn’t have come," she says.

Thankfully, there was room for the piano in her new home. But she also had a number of collectibles that needed new homes, as she couldn’t take most of her existing furniture with her. "I have lovely things," she says, "like china and things from my parents. They’re years and years old, but I treasure them." She also had small clocks and photos of her children and grandchildren that she wanted to display.