Cut through clutter: This Louisville woman helps the elderly let go of a lifetime of stuff

Kay Barringer knows that whatever is left near the doorway must disappear quietly.

It's a special arrangement she has with one of her favorite clients.

The two women never speak about what happens to the antique photographs she's held onto for decades or the old film slides that have gathered dust for years. It’s this client’s nature to be sentimental, and it’s Barringer’s job to cut through the clutter.

Many of the people Barringer works with have collected a lifetime of stuff, and others have inherited it from people they love.

As some people age and move out of their homes and into retirement communities, it all needs somewhere to go.

That’s where Barringer comes in.

We live in a world where once treasured china and crystal goblets fill up second-hand shops. Sturdy antique furniture meant for turn-of-the-century homes with large parlors doesn’t always fit into the transient lifestyle of the youngest generation of workers. Storage unit companies are among some of the fastest-growing businesses in this country with people paying hundreds of dollars per month to hide away things they can’t bear to part with, but that they also can’t reasonably use.

I’ve personally passed on enough family treasures and hand-me-downs to fill at least two apartments. That's among the many reasons Barringer’s business, Transitioning Services, fascinated me when I heard about it.

She’s a concierge of sorts to saying goodbye to the tangible things in our lives. Barringer guides her clients and their families as they work through what they really want to keep.

“My experience is they don’t want a lot, and that is extremely hurtful,” she told me, as we sat in her dining room.

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So she patiently and kindly finds somewhere for all that stuff to go.

She’s a master of sorting through and labeling just how much a retired couple can comfortably fit into a downsized home or assisted living community. She doesn’t sell things, but she keeps a list of people she trusts who do. When she can, she encourages her clients to consider donating the excess to organizations such as the Salvation Army or The Healing Place. Her best days at work are the ones where she can drop quality mattresses, suitcases, and furniture off at area nonprofits, who help families that need it.

She serves as a kind and patient buffer when a granddaughter doesn’t want to take all four sets of family china that have been stored in the basement or doesn’t have space to hold onto a large trunk of old photographs picturing people she never met.

When it’s necessary, Barringer gently suggests adult children, at the very least, carry the things out of the home, even if they don’t intend to keep them.

Sometimes that’s easier than watching things go in a waste bin.

Barringer’s first started helping seniors downsize about 15 years ago after her own family had to clean out her parents' farm.

Closing out an estate or moving a loved one into an assisted living community can be incredibly emotional, she told me, but even when it was her own family, she was able to see the whole process so logically.

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Now Barringer and her two employees complete about two transitions per month. Without the emotional connections to "stuff," her team can power through the packing and unpacking much more quickly than the client or their children would. Over the years, she's done hundreds of homes, and depending on the size of the job, they've charged as much as $7,500 for large estates or just a few hundred dollars for less tedious apartment moves.

Nancy Weber, 79, first met with Barringer during the summer of 2017. The retired middle school principal needed to move from her 2,600-square-foot-home into a 1,900-square-foot condo.

So not everything needed to go, but quite a bit of it did.

Barringer and her team helped her say goodbye to two bedrooms and a whole basement worth of things. She scaled back an entire Christmas tree worth of Hallmark Scarlett O'Hara ornaments to just three treasured collectibles. She had stacks of old Life Magazines, and she whittled that down to just two — one from Queen Elizabeth II's coronation and one from the week when she was born.

She had boxes of letters from her mother, and she held on to the ones with real meaning and let go of others that just said "how are you" and had a clipping from a magazine attached.

"Literally where am I going to put all that," she remembers thinking. "So I chose letters that meant something."

Barringer's upbeat attitude and her ability to really listen made the whole process easier, Weber told me.

"She truly has a way of empathizing with a person that she’s working with," Weber said when we spoke on the phone. "We're alike in age and circumstance, but we’re all very different."

That kindness, though, doesn't deter the whole mission. Weber remembers Barringer tackling her home in sections, and being able to power through the whole process and still have meaningful conversations along the way.

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Weber first heard about Barringer through a friend, and really that's how Transition Services gets most of its clients. She doesn’t need to advertise at all. Communities for the elderly often pass out her business cards to new residents. Over the years, she’s guided clusters of neighbors and whole families to make difficult transitions into new homes.

Going into strangers’ homes and doing this kind of work is very personal, she told me, and as we spoke, I realized she's very protective of the people she helps. She mostly stays tight-lipped about the unconventional, unflattering, and horrifying things she’s seen.

And she’s seen quite a bit since she got her start.

Barringer has helped hoarders, who have piled up so many things they can’t cook in their kitchen or even use a restroom in their home. She’s met homeowners with extensive collections of dolls, clowns and even ventriloquist dummies. She's encountered bedbugs and upholstery laden with decades worth of cigarette smoke.

She’s had enough awkward moments that she always encourages the elderly, whether they're her clients or not, to throw out anything that might traumatize their children later. Secrets and unwanted details hide in old love letters, diaries, and in the scribbles on the backs of old photographs. If you want to take a secret to your grave, do it. Don't leave a paper trail and questions behind.

Her work isn’t always pretty, but it’s incredibly rewarding.

Calling Barringer an organizer would be an oversimplification. More often than not, her main role is helping the people who hire her safely fit their world into a much smaller space.

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Whenever financially feasible, she likes to move her clients into their new homes before they sell the old one. She doesn’t want them to feel like they’ll never see their things again, and that way, they have a trial period of sorts before they start actually purging things.

“They don’t miss it,” she told me. “They rarely miss it. They get in (to communities), and they’re having dinner with people, and they’re active.”

Barringer manages the details in the decorating all the way down to the order family photos are hung on the wall. Something as simple as a wedding photo in the place where a snapshot from a family reunion always had been can make a space feel less like home.

She even asks couples who sleeps on which side of the bed, and she arranges the nightstands in a way that adheres to that habit.

If the husband has always been the one to walk around the front of the bed to the bathroom in the other house, that shouldn’t change just because they’ve switched bedrooms. Shaking up a routine like that could be a safety hazard, as well.

Those details, though, are part of what makes moving day so much fun for her.

Her team never leaves until all the boxes are unpacked. In a matter of a few hours, they can hang all the clothes in the closet, fold all the towels and fluff all the pillows on the bed. She can make sure grandpa’s table is right next to his recliner, and that the TV he’s always used is plugged in and ready to go.

Naturally, there might be some emotions, but most of the time, the new space has something really valuable that her clients never quite expected — familiarity.

“When they come in that afternoon and we’re done, their home is now in a new place, but it’s all their things,” she said.

Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you've got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com or 502-582-4053. Follow along on Instagram and Twitter @MaggieMenderski.

Want to know more?

To reach Transitioning Services, contact Kay Barringer at 502-643-9286 or barringerbunch@aol.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Transitioning Services in Louisville helps elderly get rid of clutter