Transition Solutions

80 years old and still gorgeous

Sometimes we have the privilege of working in magnificent older houses of Johannesburg. They don't have to be Randlord homes to be magnificent. The craftsmanship, parquet floors and deep red entrance hall ceramic tiles seem to slow one down, breathing quietens and you relax. Strange.

No wonder the new owners were ready, as we cleared each room, to get started with their renovations which will be sympathetic to the original architecture. The sliding doors will remain, as will the floors. Just some modernising.

"I should have insisted that we do this a long time ago"

After her husband passed away, our client continued to live in a complex that was rapidly deteriorating. It had been home for over 15 years after they made the move to Johannesburg from the coast. She was full of anxiety: afraid to look out her lounge window at night, afraid to make the decision to move, afraid to try to pack, afraid to decide what to throw away. All this emotion weighed very heavily on her.

A cousin gave her the support to finally make the decision to move to a retirement village, and the village suggested she contact Transition Solutions to assist her with the move. It was obvious that "Emma's" deep-seated fears and anxieties over the years had led to a total inability to discard anything in case it would be needed in the future. Over two days, and with care and empathy, our team were able to sort out what would be needed in the new apartment to allow comfortable living, what the items were that brought joy and ignited pleasant memories, what needed to be donated, and what should be dumped. "Emma" was aghast at the volume of stuff that was donated to a charity and designated to the dump. “Is that really all our stuff!! Where was it stored!”

On day three the truck was packed and we unpacked her in her new 1,5 bedroom 1st floor apartment – curtains and windows open, fellow residents popping in to say hello and offer tea or coffee. Emma virtually changed in those few hours! She accepted tea and said hello to all; being more in command, and even suggesting that we leave some boxes behind so she could donate further items to the charity so she could free up some of her living space of the small bits and pieces that she had clung to.

“I should have insisted that we do this a long time ago, whilst my husband was still alive and able to assist. But he was so against moving!”

And yes, there was a garage of mystery stuff – all taken care of and keys handed to the estate agent.

With aging, we recommend moving to a place where you are surrounded by people of your own generation. This offers a unique sense of comfort, camaraderie and shared understanding, largely because you share a common historical timeline, bond over shared experiences and, dare I say, aching joints!

If you would like to discuss, please give us a call.

Clear and precise

Some people just work on a level of organisation that is quite incredible. We like to think that we (Shanoo and I 😜) operate like this, so when we meet a kindred spirit it is like the ultimate Marie Kondo experience!

Our client was moving from a superbly organised estate home to a retirement village. The sewing room had been carefully built into a study cupboard (just swing the doors open to discover an Aladdin's Cave of joy for a home sewer); similarly with the home office, kitchen, tv cupboards, toolroom. This was then mirrored in the new home in the retirement village, focusing on the efficiency of form and function rather than just reducing size - what a joy to simply move it across.

A lot of rightsizing took place prior to us coming on site, so only the most loved and necessary items were moved across. Care was taken to ensure that the Persian carpets were laid with the nap in the right direction to reflect the light properly to enhance the colour - now that is precision thinking!

What a joy to work with these wonderful clients! We can honestly say that even after 10 years assisting our clients move their lives, we were awestruck with the precision thinking!

Paradise Road

Our local retirement villages are quite spectacular when it comes to gardens. This made me smile everytime I made my way to our client’s door.

Planning and working side by side

Packing up and moving is hugely stressful. Ideally, it is beneficial for all if we can be involved in the planning process from the point where the decision to move has been made – and a retirement village agreed upon. However, if this isn’t possible, we simply concertina all the planning stages into a shorter rollout period.

Our clients called us in the latter half of 2025. They were selling the family home and moving to a retirement village. Together we discussed what would fit, and what should be gifted to children, kept for storage, sold and disposed of. Furniture was measured and adjusted on floor plans, and we agreed that there would be limited cupboard space and what realistically should be brought over to make sure they were comfortable and content in their new home. Looking forward and not dwelling too much on the past also relieved some of the stress of letting go of stuff collected over a lifetime.

We are now at the point where the move is imminent. At a site visit to the new home this week we were able to pace out where the furniture would be positioned, which curtains to hang and which way the nap of the carpets should face for maximum effect. A carpenter has been briefed to build additional storage cupboards and removal quotes from our preferred moving company have been approved. Precise action plans have also been agreed, and supplies required for the job are being requisitioned.

Everything is ready. All that’s now left for the client to do in the weeks leading up to the move is to reduce their grocery stock with some clever and exotic menu planning! The new grocery cupboard is rather small!! Although with clever use of baskets some minor miracles can be achieved.

KICKSTARTING 2026

Both for us at Transition Solutions, and our client who found it unbelievably emotional to make decisions about what to keep or dispose of when clearing her mother-in-law's apartment to get it ready for sale. When family members are living overseas, it is sometimes a very heavy burden to make these decisions on their behalf.

With some gentle coaxing and joint decision-making, it was a very productive day. A few tears, followed with relief!

Best wishes for 2026 to all who read this post! If you need any assistance to downsize or move an elderly parent - or indeed yourself - please contact either Shanoo or myself.

Estate Clearance - Here For You

I was on my hands and knees, stretched deep into the kitchen cupboard below the sink, pulling out armful after armful of kitchenware – some used and ready for hospice, other for auction, and some for dump. The sheer magnitude of stuff in just one little cupboard brought quite a few gasps. This was just one of a household of cupboards that we sorted and cleared.
Dealing with the tasks associated with the passing of a loved one, expected or unexpected, can be overwhelming. Once the legal and administrative duties have been taken care of, the task of packing up and closing a house can feel like one final hurdle too much.
It can be cathartic for families to join together during this process, and allow the sharing of familial memories, experiences, stories and photographs to help cope with grief and loss. But in today’s world of families scattered across the globe, it is not always easy to do this.
Our clients become our ‘family’ as well – that’s the only way we know how to pack up a home that has been lived in and loved, and flag items that might have memories attached to keep aside, because we know we would want that done for us – and we use all tools of communication available to involve all in decision-making wherever they are. We burn up WhatsApp groups and video calls, and sometimes endless excel spreadsheets. It is important for everyone to be involved in the decision making, and enabled to select special memories to remind them of their roots.
We are Here For You if you need assistance to pack up a family home. Just give us a call for a chat. Even just for advice.

The small details count

We offer a bespoke service where we try and manage all the highs and lows that moving brings with it. Some clients are excited and ready for the move (not many, obviously 😊), and some are so thrown by the process that they feel like they are holding their breath and cannot see passed their immediate anxiety!

That is when the small details count. Keeping all the familiarity of the old home in the new home. Our client’s one constant was the display cabinet from his mother – with carefully curated ornaments collected over a lifetime. For his spouse, it was the collection of spices and herbs used every day, all day! And bottles of mystery – also definitely used all the time. We recreated their treasures and spaces, and with their first steps into their new home came huge smiles and releasing of breath!

They were surrounded by what they knew, arranged as it had always been. Though we took a chance on their cupboards and rearranged their smalls into storage containers on each shelf, colour coded jerseys and T’s, applied some logic to the hanging space. Now that really scored the jackpot in smiles!

From Sydney, with love

When children (adults with their own families) make the decision to follow their dreams and careers and move away from home, it comes with a heavy heart leaving all they know behind. Not to mention dear parents. Our clients' mum passed a few years ago just as the mum and dad moved into a retirement village, and dad was not coping well with the loneliness of being alone, and advancing age. It just made sense to move him yet again into an assisted living facility. However it isn't easy to manage all of this from afar.

We were able to assist and be their representatives here when they were not able to be - sorting, packing, moving and settling dad in, clearing, surface clean, and handing over the keys. Even packing memories and shipping them off. And when the family was together, the precious time was spent doing good family stuff like chatting, coffee, and pouring over photograph albums.

Here for you, wherever you may be!

Banter and Bananas

An area of our business offering we don't talk much about is being Here for You when YOU can't be. You live overseas and would just like to have someone call on your beloved mum and/or dad - to check on them, chat to them and be a friend. Shanoo has given us an account of some of her experiences with our clients below:

Over the many years of facilitating, downsizing and move services to seniors, from much loved family homes to smaller living options, the one type of service that I have valued the most is when those relationships continued after the move, and I am asked to visit beloved parents.

The purpose of the visits ranged from trouble-shooting hiccups like incorrectly entered banking pins and being locked out of online banking to accompanying them to doctors’ appointments and hospital stays, resolving Wi-Fi issues, paying the helper and gardener, clearing cell phones of endless spam to managing menus and carer oversight to providing companionship. I came to realise very early on, that my visits were more than being about the practical and a tea break. I chose to define my role as being an advocate for communicating the needs of my clients to family, nursing staff, carers and banks and cell phone providers. To run interference essentially. Even to the point of being very clear, that yes, if my client complains about something, then I’m thrilled that they have the energy to complain even if we can’t resolve the matter easily. For me that meant they were still engaged and not resigned to monotony.

I remember the day a client called me frantically to check where I was because she thought I had forgotten to visit her. I reassured her that I was 10 minutes away and not late yet. The joy on my arrival, the happy anticipation was mutually loving and supportive. We fell into our routine; tone down CNN, put in the hearing aids, let the carer take a break and settle down to munch on bananas (the bananas I carried as a mid-morning snack were tastier than the ones in the kitchenette), or cheese puffs and easy conversations about my interests too, from books, to South Korean culture and politics, funny anecdotes, my own family news. The focus always on fun and laughter.

If we accept that children offer a kind of reverse parenting as their loved ones’ age, then I find that I sometimes adopt the same way of approaching conversation as one might with a reluctant teen or small child averse to direct questions. While clearing the cell phone and allowing the conversation to take its own pace and my client to talk about anything or nothing, but to sit in quiet companionship, what is in their hearts begins to surface. To hold space for the recall of memories of earlier family life, marriages gone awry, experiences with their own parents, what each of their children mean to them, the gratitude unarticulated and encouraging its sharing with the child in the next phone call.

I am deeply grateful for the trust my clients, both the children and the parents placed in me, and my life is the richer for the memories I now have.

TESTIMONIAL from a loving daughter:
As my Mom has become physically weaker she’s needed carers to attend to her physical needs, but with no family or friends left in Johannesburg, (I have lived abroad for many years), she was feeling increasingly isolated, lonely, and depressed. My annual visits to SA were no longer enough to keep her spirits up, and I became very concerned about her.
After looking around for a counsellor, I remembered that Shanoo was a trained and experienced social worker, and contacted her to see if she could work with my Mom and was so delighted when she agreed!
We’ve established a pattern of weekly visits. Shanoo’s visits are invaluable for my Mom: she provides emotional support and reassurance, the opportunity to talk freely about the things that are important to Mom or are worrying her, as well as practical support sorting out any problems that arise - from managing her phone to understanding puzzling emails or giving instructions to her carers. The list is long!
I cannot recommend Shanoo highly enough. She is a very down to earth, positive, approachable, and sympathetic person. She’s perceptive and thoughtful, offers good practical ideas and advice, is very professional and organised and communication with her flows easily. Her work with my Mom has given me a new feeling … peace of mind about my Mom’s well-being and safety. The support she provides is exemplary and I will always be grateful for her professionalism and the love and kindness she shows.