Episode 12: The Missing Piece of Estate Planning: What Happens to the Stuff We Leave Behind
How prepared is your family to handle more than just your money?
Major life transitions often come with more than paperwork and financial decisions. They also come with homes, storage units, closets, and inherited belongings full of items that carry emotional weight, practical questions, and sometimes real financial value. As wealth and possessions are passed between generations, families are increasingly faced with difficult decisions about what to keep, what to let go of, and how to handle it all thoughtfully.
In this episode, Robin Cartwright, founder of Mindful Moveouts, shares how she helps individuals and families deal with downsizing, estate cleanouts, inherited belongings, and major move transitions. She breaks down the emotional and logistical challenges that come with sorting through a lifetime of possessions, how to identify what may hold financial or sentimental value, and why having a plan for your physical belongings is just as important as having a plan for your money.
Listen in as Robin explains how to reduce overwhelm during life transitions, make intentional decisions about inherited items, avoid costly storage mistakes, and create more clarity for the people you love.
What You’ll Learn:
Why physical belongings can become a major financial and emotional burden during life transitions.
How inherited items may hold emotional value, financial value, or neither.
Why “wealth” passed down through generations often includes more than money.
The hidden long-term cost of keeping storage units for unused belongings.
How to thoughtfully sort items into what to keep, donate, sell, or revisit later.
Why families should document plans for household contents alongside estate documents.
How meaningful items can be preserved without keeping everything.
Why having passwords, records, and key documents accessible can reduce stress for loved ones.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“Wealth does not mean dollar. Wealth could be collections of items.” - Robin Cartwright
“You can keep the memory and not the item." - Robin Cartwright
“If we had just gone in with a slash-and-burn mentality—clean it out so we can sell the condo—we might not have found things like that.” - Robin Cartwright
Resources:
About Our Guest:
Robin Cartwright is the founder of Mindful Moveouts, a company that helps individuals and families deal with downsizing, estate cleanouts, inherited belongings, and major move transitions with care and intention. Her work combines organization, logistics, sustainability, and emotional sensitivity to help clients reduce overwhelm, preserve meaningful items, and make thoughtful decisions during difficult life changes.
Connect with Us:
If you're ready to stop avoiding your finances and start building the future you deserve, schedule a free call with me at pelicanfinancialplanning.com and let’s create your personalized financial plan together.
And if you want ongoing guidance, clarity, and confidence as you grow your wealth, subscribe to our newsletter for financial insights delivered right to your inbox.
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Read the Transcript:
Robin Cartwright: If we had just gone in with this like ‘slash-and-burn mentality, clean it out so we can sell the condo,’ we might not have found things like that. Approximately $90 trillion in wealth is currently being passed from the silent generation and baby boomers to their heirs.
Welcome to The Wealth Development Studio. I'm your host, Genevieve George, Senior Financial Advisor and Founder of Pelican Financial Planning & Wealth. Our goal for this episode is to provide clarity about today's financial topic, inspire you to be brave with your questions, and gain confidence in your financial future. So take a deep breath, grab your favorite cup of coffee, and step into the studio. Your dose of financial empowerment begins now.
Genevieve George: Today's conversation is about something we don't talk about enough in financial planning: the physical side of life transitions. When clients go through retirement, divorce, loss of a loved one, downsizing, or even just a major life reset, there’s often more than spreadsheets involved. There are homes full of belongings.
There are memories attached to furniture and file cabinets. There are decisions about what to keep, what to sell, what to donate, and what to let go of. That's where today's guest comes in. I'm joined by Robin Cartwright, founder of Mindful Moveouts. Robin helps individuals and families navigating downsizing, the state cleanouts, and major move transitions with care, organization, and—as her business name suggests—mindfulness.
Her work sits at a fascinating intersection of emotional well-being, practical logistics, and financial decision-making. Because when we talk about simplifying life, reducing overhead, preparing a home for sale, or managing an estate, those aren't just personal decisions. They're financial ones too. Today we're gonna explore how mindful move management supports long-term planning, how families can prepare proactively rather than reactively, and why clearing physical space can sometimes create financial clarity.
So Robin, I'm so excited to have you here sharing your information with us. What can you tell us about what is the typical engagement look like? Who's reaching out to you and what's driving them to need you?
Robin Cartwright: Sure. Absolutely. And thank you for this opportunity to be here. That was an amazing introduction. I'm just gonna copy that and just put it on the front of everything that we do 'cause that was so thoughtful and so well said. The people that we engage with most are people who just have a lot of questions about, “What do I do with my stuff?”
Whether it's currently their stuff, and they're trying to figure out what to do with it when they pass, or if they're moving and what to do with it. Or people more often than not, who've inherited stuff, and they just have no idea what to do with it. I just read a statistic that approximately $90 trillion in wealth is currently being passed from the silent generation and baby boomers to their heirs.
But wealth does not mean dollar. Wealth could be collections of items. They could be things that they've collected over the years, like baseball card collections. It could be antique furniture, it could be paintings. So that's a lot of the questions that we get are people of a younger demographic typically who have inherited those things, and they just don't know what to do with them at this point.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. And when they don't know what to do with them, that could be a big mistake too, right? My family enjoys collecting cards, sporting cards. So if somebody comes along and doesn't know that has any value, they could trash it, right?
Robin Cartwright: We’re the opposite side of things. They’re insistent that it has value, and it doesn't.
So the emotional attachment that we have to things is really a difficult conversation to navigate. We're certainly not telling people to get rid of everything. If it means something to you, find a way to incorporate it, but also not everything has value. It's all relative to where we are in this space and time and where we live geographically.
We found things in South Florida that we think are absolutely amazing, and nobody here wants them, so we're making arrangements to get them to Jacksonville, Florida, where the demographic is a little bit different and a little more eclectic, and so there is a space for everything. But yeah, those things that have value, it is interesting helping people find what it's worth to them emotionally, but then also what it could be worth financially if they're ready to part with it.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And actually, as you're talking, it's resonating with me personally in that I think, Robin, you knew this, but I live in what was my grandmother's home, had all these beautiful furnishings of an 80-something-year-old woman, that she had collected throughout her whole life.
And it was really difficult to sort of transition that over time to say that was her style, but that doesn't have to be our style. There is an emotional piece to that that is so difficult to work through, particularly in an estate situation. How do you help guide your clients in that manner?
Robin Cartwright: Yeah, and I think also it's how raw it is emotionally at that moment. So the reason we got started is because my husband's uncle unexpectedly passed away, and he had no will and no heirs, no children. So it was emotional for him from that standpoint of he was very close to his uncle, and he would see him a couple times a month. He lived down in Fort Lauderdale.
And the other side of that is he was a hoarder. So that's a lot of stuff, right? This is like decades of collections of items and also not everything is clean. So there was a big discussion with his family about what do we do with it? Like his condo, we've gotta sell it, but first we've gotta go through probate and all the legality of everything you have to deal with on the death side of things, not having a will and having to get through an attorney, et cetera.
But then the items that he had and the one sibling was quick to call a dumpster and just start throwing things away as she was looking for a will. I, along with my husband, were very traumatized by that because a lot of these items could be repurposed. Just to be clear, there are certain things that do need to be disposed of.
Ideally, we would love for nothing to make it to a landfill, but there are situations where that's just unavoidable. But also, we were told to look very specifically for a painting that had been passed down in his family, and that ended up going to Sotheby's to be auctioned off. So you never know in somebody's living situation, also what they have that is a value, whether it's emotional or financial, if we hadn't known to look for that, and then to find the paperwork to support it so it could be sold for the most money that it could be sold for.
If we had just gone in with this like a ‘slash-and-burn mentality, clean it out so we can sell the condo,’ we might not have found things like that.
Genevieve George: Yeah, you might've said, don't like it. Bye.
Robin Cartwright: The painting was not my taste. So for me it was very easy to call Sotheby's and say, “Hey, what's the process?” And it was so much fun doing the research to find the provenance for it.
They actually had the will where it was originally inherited, so we were able to prove how it was received by the family and that it had never been in circulation, so it was of interest to certain people. The downside, it had not been stored properly, so it had some fading and some other things that Sotheby's wasn't a hundred percent on, but it really created a great opportunity for us to learn.
What do you do with those things, like those baseball card collections, like those rare paintings, like those antiques, finding a way to get them to where they need to be so that even if you don't financially benefit what you think you should, because you always think something is worth more than it probably ever is.
That you still get something out of it and somebody is still benefiting from it later.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. And in that situation, using your husband's uncle as an example, he passed suddenly. What if it was something where you maybe had known that this was coming, he was ill for a long time. Would that conversation or would that process have looked different?
Like how would you have advised them if you could get in on the front end?
Robin Cartwright: Yeah, interestingly, I spoke to a therapy group about the emotional attachment you have to things while you're living in oh, I love this, so you're gonna love this, so let me give this to you. And you're creating a potential obligation for somebody.
So, to your point, having those conversations well in advance, like I loved this. This is where this came from. Do you want it? I have some paintings in my house that are from my great aunt whom I've never met, but I love them and I've incorporated them because they're meaningful, because I know where they came from.
The flip side of that is I have something like a fondue pot sitting in my storage unit right behind me. I've never used it. I don't know where it came from, and I have this weird obligation to keep it. Nobody asked if I wanted it. It just showed up one day, and here it is. So I am my own worst enemy when it comes to some of these things, but I do think people having very thoughtful conversations, maybe wanna keep it because it does have some kind of family memory attached to it.
But I'm also a very firm believer that you can keep the memory and not the item. And it may be a difficult conversation for people to have, like this isn't really my taste, or let me help you find somebody who would much more enjoy this. Or what about so and so in our family, they're the family historian. They love these photographs.
There's a way to navigate that conversation very thoughtfully. And I know it's easier said than done, but I do think people need to have them well in advance before they create an obligation for somebody when it's too late.
Genevieve George: Right, right. And an obligation that person may not really even know what that means.
And just having experienced it in my own families, like there's a lot of things you just don't really know. And if you haven't had that good conversation, you don't know what the value could be. You don't even know where to start, really. And that's why a professional like you is so important because we could have a house full of treasures or a house full of things that could just be repurposed so somebody in need could use them, but they really don't have a lot of value.
It's so important to have that help because, honestly, there are things that you don't know, right? I'm not going to use the silver tea set. We don't drink tea, nor do we sit around.
Robin Cartwright: And it's allowed to polish.
Genevieve George: Nor do we sit around with our silver. But what do we do with it?
So do you work with families as well where it's not necessarily in a state situation, but something more where they're trying to just declutter their life.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. Right now, we've got a situation where we're helping a young woman who had three family members pass away.
I'm not sure if it was unexpected. I think one was unexpected, two were expected, but she inherited all of their items. She's from a very small family, and so now she has a storage unit. She's already gone through and taken out what she wants to keep, and she contacted a couple of her family members and made sure that they got what they wanted, but now she has all this stuff.
And so we're working with her to help her make donations where they can be best used. So a couple local nonprofits are benefiting here, does wanna sell what she can sell. So it's not a true estate sale situation, but we are helping her have a pseudo estate sale. So she can at least—
Genevieve George: Get some value from those items.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah, because she ended up paying for three funerals and their expenses very unexpectedly, or at least a portion of them. And so she's trying to recoup some of that financially. But we had to find a way to help her because she doesn't have a place to have a yard sale. She doesn't know what to do with these items.
She doesn't know the nonprofit landscape very well. So we connected her with a couple nonprofits, and then we created a virtual estate sale for her. That's online so that we can arrange pickup at her storage unit, and then we'll slowly go through those items. It's not a quick process, unfortunately, like if you were having an actual yard sale where you could wheel and deal in that moment.
But we're helping her transition those items out of that storage unit so she can eventually recover the cost also of not having and speak of a storage unit because she's paying for space for things that she doesn't even use or want.
Genevieve George: Yeah, and there is a financial component to it. It's just stuff to her.
At this point, she's pulled out the items that really matter to her, but now she's paying for a storage unit to hold these items until she figures out what to do with them. So the more help that can be provided to getting that creates some reduced financial burden, right?
Robin Cartwright: Yeah, absolutely. And she's dealing with the grief side of things still, even though it's been about, I think she told me two years since the last person passed away.
She is still dealing with the emotional grief side of things, but I think she's very pragmatic and practical, recognizing that she has items that she doesn't need and that she doesn't want, and that she is literally paying for this space, not just the emotional space that it's taking up, but the literal space that it's taking up so that now she's ready to move on and move on from those things.
It's interesting. I almost feel like I should have a therapy degree in some way because of the amount of grief that people experience. And I love hearing the stories though that they share with me when they're going through these items. Like it was very touching to sit with her when we went through her storage unit the other day to take these photos.
Like, oh, I remember when my grandmother used this and she used to do this on the weekends when she would have family dinners, and it was really touching for her to be able to share that with me. So I do appreciate that side of it.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I do a little therapy in my job too.
Robin Cartwright: I know you do, yeah.
Genevieve George: There's definitely a mental health component to all of this.
When you're working with individuals, do you see that it is primarily like in some level of estate, like that was post estate a couple years out, but it's still related to these inherited assets. Is that normally what you see or are you seeing other types of transitions happening?
Robin Cartwright: A lot of what we get are people who have collected things over the years. I don't know what to do with this.
I had this huge collection because I was a big fan of this team. Now I'm married, and my wife doesn't like these items. Or we have kids and now we have no space for these items. Or I had to build my wife a she shed, and now all her stuff's out there. Like it's any number of things. It's not just men, I have to say.
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Robin Cartwright: A lot of the conversations that we have with people are, “What do I do with my stuff?” And it is just stuff on some level, but it's interesting. A lot of those people are not ready to part with those items either. We get a lot of calls like, yeah, I want you to come out and I want you to, and that's the reality of, I have committed to getting rid of things is a totally different conversation that somebody who has inherited things that they didn't really want and moving those on.
Genevieve George: And so I feel like you're coming in, in a mindful way, and you're helping them to align what those items are with their goals. So that person that you're saying had a sports memorabilia collection, we'll call it. But that is no longer the goal. That was like a goal when he or she was unmarried and had space for this, and their life changed.
Robin Cartwright: So we've had a lot of conversations, and when they’re ready, they’re ready. We're certainly not trying to force anything because that is the one thing I have learned in this, even just dealing with my husband's grief is that when you're not ready to part with something, you're just not ready to part with it.
It is not my place or anybody's place to come in and say, “You have to get rid of this.” So it is a process. For some people, it is hire a dumpster company, empty everything out, or call a local nonprofit, come pick everything up. It's a different conversation where they're at versus what we're trying to accomplish.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And how do you come to connect with these clients? Is it primarily the individual reaching out to you, or is it maybe some sort of coordination with other professionals in their life that is trying to help?
Robin Cartwright: Interestingly, through some therapists who deal with Greek counseling, who give our information out, and I did speak to a therapy group here just about the emotional attachment you have to physical things.
I went in and spoke, and we talked about just things, right? Just literal things and emotional attachments that you have to them. Then she encouraged them to go through their house and find one thing each that they were ready to part with. So I went back to their therapy group. We had a little reconvening of the session, and then I took all of their items, and I categorized them, and I figured out where they would have the best value.
And I made drop-offs at a couple local nonprofits and then reported back to them what we were able to do with them so that they could see the value, hoping to motivate them to start to clean things out. This is what you provided as a group collectively, and this is where your items went, so.
Genevieve George: That's amazing.
And could you share like maybe an example of an item that somebody would pull from their home that they’re…?
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. So books. Books are a big one. Post COVID, there's a lot of things that nonprofits, thrift stores, consignment stores won't take. So we have to be very mindful of that. The goal is not to create a situation for another group, right?
I don't want you looking at your house and make it hard for a nonprofit to do something with it. One of the items that they all interestingly donated in addition to other things were books. So making sure that the books didn't have anything in them. My grandmother used to hide things in books.
Like money. So going through all of the books to make sure nothing was secretly stashed in there that somebody might need back, and then taking those to the friends of the library so that they could help benefit their nonprofit. Some of the other items that they contributed were things like cookware, things that had usefulness for somebody else, so took them all to our local nonprofit at House of Hope and drop those off along with some clothes and some other things.
Genevieve George: Yeah, planning a kitchen purge this summer, so I'm glad that you mentioned that. Now, I'm so curious when you are brought in and you have free reign, right? This house is gonna be put on the market and we need to really clean it out and work your magic. Can you talk through what that process is like, how you manage it, how you care for what's in the helm and what that communication was with the family?
Give us like a feel for if you were doing this for a home in my family, but I don't live anywhere near the home. What does that look like?
Robin Cartwright: So people who are living near the home or were working in their home, it is definitely a different conversation because they're there.
Genevieve George: Right. Yes. And they wanna tell you all those stories, right?
Robin Cartwright: And they wanna go through things and it's not a very quick process. And that's fine. I mean it long as we're prepared for that at that moment. I'll give you an example. I have one friend that lives in Jacksonville who I actually went with her to Nashoba, Oklahoma to help her clean out a family farm.
And the house was getting ready to go up for sale and so worked with her to research like, okay, who can we take these items to for donations? Her mom had passed away, her grandparents had passed away. She wasn't going to live in the farm. And it is a beautiful space. Like I could see why somebody would live there, but it's out in the middle of nowhere and you've gotta be committed to a very—
Genevieve George: It's a different choice than what she wanted to make.
Robin Cartwright: It's a choice. It's not such a choice. But she had some items that she was looking for that she wanted to bring back. So she had rented a van. It was like a game of Jenga, getting that stuff back. And then there's me the whole time, are you sure you need this? Are you sure you want this? Trying to be a very supportive friend in the process, but also like, “Woman, there is nowhere for me to sit in this van at this point.”
Like we have got to make some choices and so certain things that she wanted to ship to her mom's friends. And so it was a great learning opportunity on how to operate when you're in a town that you don't know anybody. But when we got back was the interesting part. Now she has all of these things. Her kitchen also had just been renovated because she had a piper, so she had to get all new cabinets.
So it was a really good chance to go through things and let's clean this out. Let's get rid of things. In the meantime, she had purchased another set of dishes because I don't know why. And so we defined a space for that, but it made her happy.
Genevieve George: We’re all human, so just sometimes you impulse buy.
Robin Cartwright: Absolutely. And she loves to entertain. She loves to entertain. I do not fault her at all, like she's great taste in everything that she purchases, but we've gotta make some decisions because space is limited.
So we redid her entire pantry area to make some space in there for some of her serving pieces. 'cause they couldn't be in the kitchen anymore.
And while I was there she said, “Hey, let's clean up my she shed.” Okay. “And while I'm there, clean up my office.” Okay. And so we tried to make good use of the time, and what I found works best with people, whether they're local or not local is we make piles for them to go through. Like you need to give us the discretion to make these decisions, and this is what you absolutely can get rid of.
You don't need these five keyboards, you don't need these four speakers to computers that you don't have anymore. And P.S: By the way. We found a place that will take them and repurpose them so that you don't have to take 'em to a landfill. Let us do that for you. You've got these 10 crock pots that you don't need.
You need one, maybe two. I don't know.
Genevieve George: Right.
Robin Cartwright: Pick the two that you like most, and let me get rid of the other eight. Let's find a place to donate them. If you need the tax, write off what's your favorite charity and does that charity even want them or have space for them at this point? And then the third pile is, this is stuff you need to go through on your time.
These are pictures, these are mementos. These are letters that we found that you need to do with your favorite beverage. Maybe some friends or family members, or on your own. And do that at a pace that you're comfortable. You can keep them, you can dispose of them
Genevieve George: Without the pressure of me watching you.
Robin Cartwright: Right. And without you telling me that you want to keep them. That’s fine. I'm not here to tell you that you can't keep anything, so we found that method works best whether people are on-site or not on-site. The only difference is when people don't live locally, it's a little bit easier because they haven't seen those items in so long that they don't have that emotional reaction.
It's an interesting conversation, and it does take some gentle pushing and some gentle navigation, but I think we do it well. Yeah.
Genevieve George: Now, as you're going through, 'cause every family is different, right? Do you see a common thread throughout the groups that you're working with? Is there a mistake that you wish that you could coach people not to make when as they're like entering into this?
Robin Cartwright: It's hard 'cause for me it's not emotional. It's easy for me to say these things. The one thing I hear over and over and over is, “My mom loved this, so I must love it. Or, my grandmother loved this, so I must love it.” And you don't, and
Genevieve George: And they need permission to not feel that way.
Robin Cartwright: And you obviously don't love it. Like it's an obligation at this point. So no matter how small it is, and the problem is all these small items eventually take up a lot of space. It's not even like, “Oh, it's just a tea set. Or it's just a fondue pot.” It's the accumulation of all of those tea sets and all of those fondue pot and all of those pieces of clothing and those handbags and all these things that you, “Oh, I'll use it one day,” when if you haven't used it in a year or two, and you have no intention of using it unless you're gonna have a reason to use it, there's really very little reason to keep it.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. That one day it probably won't come, and then you're just collecting more dust.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. And then somebody's gonna inherit it and have to figure out. So I would like to recommend to people, I know you do financial planning, and I know that you insist to people that their high-dollar value items are all buttoned up and taken care of when their season of life has ended.
But I would like to recommend to people that you also include in your wills or your last testaments, whatever you have available that people create an opportunity for what happens to the contents of your house, other than so and so inherits my house and all of its contents.
We have a favorite charity that you love to support.
I recommend that you get in touch with them in advance, make sure you know what they'll take. So some places won't take furniture because they don't have the space for it. Some will. If you have any questions, I know you do a great job providing help for people about their philanthropy. We're happy to offer advice as well, regardless of where they're located.
But make sure that they have a plan for their contents beyond what their family members what they think they wanna take with them.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. Putting some guidance in the documents too, because particularly like obviously if somebody is gone, it is so hard for the remaining heirs to navigate that and if they do not know of the local nonprofits, so I love what you're doing 'cause you're going out and trying to figure out who will take these items? What are the options if they're not right where you are? You're researching that.
And I also really love what you said about we're trying to keep as much outta the landfill as possible. So what can be repurposed?
And I think the average person would be happy to know that that's how their items are being treated and the cookware that they hadn't used in years is benefiting somebody that needs it, that can use this to cook for their families and have it repurposed that way. So I love that you're doing that.
Robin Cartwright: Thanks.
Genevieve George: And I feel like that's taking it like a step further than some of the decluttering things on TV. If you will.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. I would also like to suggest that people have a plan for their electronics. That's the other thing that we're finding. There's a lot of old phones, old tablets, cords that we don't even know what they go to at this point.
Again, there is a place that we found that we'll take those items and wipe your data from it before they take out any components to reuse it. But if you can, generally speaking to people, have your passwords down somewhere. So whether it's in your will or just someplace that people can find them, because if there's anybody who needs to be located, if there are bank statements that need to be found, if there's, especially when it's a probate situation.
Finding online copies of bank statements so that when you go to the ports, you can say to somebody, “I know that this account is at x, Y, Z bank, and I need to make sure that I have some kind of letter that I can take to the bank to show that I am the rightful recipient or port appointed person who can take action on that,” because that's another big issue. If people don't have their will someplace that is able to be located, whether it's with a financial planner or attorney or whatever, please make sure that somebody in your family knows where to find it.
So when companies like mine come in, we can help you look for it, especially if you're not local. My mom keeps hers in the freezer and I don't think it's been updated since 1976 and I think my aunt and uncle are still my guardian, but we know where it is, and I'm sure it's filed someplace else, but I know a copy of it exists, so I just feel like that's another big hurdle for people because while you're dealing with all the emotion of everything, you also have the legality side of things.
If you've got three people who inherit something like a house and you've got three siblings who are dealing with something, who's in charge, right? You need to appoint somebody who can be a point person for companies like mine. So when decisions have to be made, we're not waiting for the discussion to be had and then get back to us.
'cause it's already a long process. We are not trying to make it any longer or more difficult.
Genevieve George: Yeah. I love what you're saying. That aligns a lot with what I try to encourage my clients is give your family the gift of clarity.
Robin Cartwright: Yes.
Genevieve George: Because you've seen it in what you're doing. I've seen it in what I do when somebody passes away, and there was no communication or no strongly worded documentation on what they want to happen.
The family is dealing with such emotion of losing their loved one that adding that administrative burden of not having the right documents in place or not having communicated appropriately is so challenging. So I always tell my clients, “Please give your family the gift of clarity. Tell them what you want to happen.”
Have as much of this conversation as you can before.
Robin Cartwright: Yes.
Genevieve George: I've seen it go both ways. I've come into client engagements where after they have lost somebody and they're working through it, and it's administratively very difficult before you even talk about the physical piece of it, right?
Yeah. Okay, administratively, this house is going into probate and all that, but we're gonna sell it because there's all these siblings. But there's so much work that has to go into being able to sell it in the first place. And that's where you come in and help give that, give your expertise to make that house clean and presentable and ready to sell.
And it's so important.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah, I agree. And our whole goal is to help as many people as we can, not just who our clients are, but help the nonprofit community, help the people that they serve, avoid having things go into a landfill, trying to not have too many conversations about what's valuable. We'll help you research things, and we'll help you get as much as you can, especially if you need the tax benefit from it.
I know states have a totally different tax bracket situation than an individual. So those conversations need to be had with professionals like you, with your attorneys, but we are here to lend, to be just one little small piece of that, to help them get to a place where they're comfortable with what's happening and getting the best out of the situation that they can that also has a benefit beyond potentially just what they get from it.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. And so it's very clear that you're providing so much value to these families, whether they're here or they have passed, and you're helping the remaining members of the family to go through all of these items and find the items of value and find the items that can to benefit charity.
Tell us the story. What is something that you have found that I know you've come across some like really cool treasures as you're going through this and how to discover those?
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. The painting was actually the most interesting thing because for me it was fun to do the research beyond the will that we found. It was just really cool. Oh, this was a Spanish painter. I've never heard of him. And then looking up his collections, like how have I never heard of him? Like it was this really cool moment. But also, I think the most cool thing I found, again, going back to my husband's uncle's estate, he and his family were close, but there's secrets in every family, and it wasn't really a secret.
But in and amongst all of these things, and this is why I am not a fan of just taking everything and putting it in a dumpster.
Genevieve George: Right.
Robin Cartwright: There was a pocket watch that we found that was a family heirloom, and it was in the little glass case as you see it, and it was engraved with his inscription, but it was tucked in between two pairs of jeans in a closet, right?
Genevieve George: Wow.
Robin Cartwright: So the clothes are negotiable. Maybe they could be donated, maybe they couldn't. P.S., by the way, because he was a forwarder, a lot of his clothes were considered vintage. So wandered them and took them to a consignment store to be able to sell that benefited a nonprofit in the area.
Genevieve George: Awesome.
Robin Cartwright: If we had not looked through everything, and I think my husband would say that I'm nosy, I would say that I'm thorough, but going through those pieces of clothing, the things that we found, like that pocket watch is beautiful and it's amazing and it has value outside of what it has to my husband.
So should he ever choose to sell it one day, I don't know what it would sell for, but when you go through things in a very mindful, thoughtful way and you find things that you're not expecting, we found letters, love letters from his marriage, like things that don't have a value to anybody else, but it was really, we didn't even read them because we felt like it was so personal that we didn't want to infringe upon that.
But it's just what you can find beyond like just what you're looking for. And so for him, it was very cathartic to go through these items. It was an opportunity for him to mourn and reminisce because his family doesn't live locally other than his uncle. It was a really wonderful opportunity to give him a chance to grieve, I think, a little bit differently.
The cool thing about doing things with people who are living is that they can then share those items with other people. So for my friend in Jacksonville, we found a bunch of pictures that she had forgotten that she even had, that came from her mother after her mother passed away, and she was able to share those with family members, group them together by who they were, and send them to them that would be meaningful to them.
So there's a lot of really great things that we find that have benefit beyond what you're looking for in that moment.
Genevieve George: Yeah. They have value to the family in. You're talking and I'm like, wow. She's an archeologist for these families.
Robin Cartwright: I met an Egyptologist once and I thought I missed my calling, even though I know nothing about Egypt, but I feel like this is what it would be like.
Genevieve George: Because you really are like, particularly like you described, you create these piles. This is what might have value that you should go through and decide if we wanna keep or sell. This is what we suggest that you donate, but that pile, that third pile, this is what we put aside, that we found that we think that you should look through on your own time.
That's the letters and the pictures and all, there is so much there for these families. Their legacy is like in that piece too, and it's just so important. It's so nice that you're coming in and you're creating that for these families too, because somebody else may come in and just dumpster all of that.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. And without even thinking twice about it. And I don't blame them. There's a need for that. I'm not discounting that. And depending on the time constraints that you have, we work with people who have the luxury of time. We try to work within their time constraints, but we really try to be very thoughtful about it, because what I don't want is somebody later to say, oh, did you find this?
You were in such a hurry because you told me I had 30 minutes to clean out your entire house that it's probably in the trash. I never wanna have that conversation with people.
I love them to know that we've done our due diligence. We have looked for what they've asked us to look for.
We have found things maybe that they weren't even expecting to find. We could help them incorporate things into their house. We had one person where she had an old church pew in a storage unit, so we cleaned it up for her so that she could put it in her house, and now it's part of her house. When you walk in, you see it, and it's beautiful, and it means something to her.
Genevieve George: And you know those families too, like we talked about the emotional sign, they may not be thinking, “Oh my gosh, I wanna find X, Y, and Z,” because they're in the emotions of having to go through having just lost a loved one and having to prep the home for sale or whatever the case may be. It may not be thinking, they may not be top of mind, and if they just hired somebody to just come in and clean it out, not thoughtfully review what's going on, but just to dump everything.
They're not going to have the opportunity to find that piece, and you're bringing them this gift to be able to say, “Hey, you didn't mention this, but we found this. We think that you might wanna look at this, and/or have these photos, or you know what photos I hold onto I really love.”
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. Pictures.
Genevieve George: So I would feel like that's a gift that you brought me that I didn't even think about. I didn't think, “Oh my gosh, there's probably family photos over there that we want to bring home.”
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. And things in storage units we found, the other thing is the financial cost of things. So like we started out this conversation.
What you're paying for a storage unit, if you've not been in it for 20 years, let's have a conversation. Do you really need these items and what can we do with them? Because also, that's a financial win for you. If you're not paying that monthly balance to a storage unit for things that you're not even using that are out of sight, out of mind, and you've had it for 20 years, that's a huge amount of money.
So the other side of the conversation is not just the emotional opportunity that you have to recover some of these memories, but it's also the financial recovery. If you're putting out money every month, wouldn't it be great to have that every month? So there's definitely some benefit analysis for some things as well.
It's not all strictly emotional and happy roses, but there is a financial side of the conversation that people definitely need to be having as well.
Genevieve George: And you think about that, I can't imagine you're getting a storage unit most places in Florida for less than a hundred bucks a month, right?
Robin Cartwright: When you're getting it on a promo and you have to keep moving because the promo.
Genevieve George: Right. And that's $1,200 a year times however many years you're doing. That's a lot of money. It adds up quick.
Robin Cartwright: It's a lot of money. It does add up. And the fact that you're literally paying for something you don't use.
Genevieve George: Exactly. Which I think at some point in time, we're all guilty of that. We moved and we had a storage unit and then we just kept paying it and then I finally said, we should probably stop paying that. Let's go over there. We didn't keep hardly anything that was in there.
That was such a waste.
Robin Cartwright: Wow.
Genevieve George: But if we did not need it for however many years we had it, we still don't need it.
Robin Cartwright: Yeah. Or find a way to incorporate at least one or two of those items if they were that meaningful. Let's figure out where in your house we can put them, or if somebody else could benefit from them, and we will help you get it outta there.
There's definitely room for all of those conversations. Yeah.
Genevieve George: I love that. I love that. So anything else that you wanna share with our audience today?
Robin Cartwright: No, I think we covered everything. I'm so grateful for this time. Thank you so much.
Genevieve George: Yeah. So how can people find you, Robin?
Robin Cartwright: They can check out our website, which is mindfulmoveouts.com. They can email us at mindfulmoveouts@gmail.com. We are also on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. People can find us for sure. We're currently located in South Florida and in North Florida. There's myself and my business partner who's up there, and so we will do anything on the East coast of Florida as long as we can make arrangements for it.
We definitely try to work with people to find the nonprofits that they wanna work with, but also to make sure that we're being very sensitive to what they're trying to accomplish.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing this with me, and I think there is so much that aligns with how you're approaching what you're doing with your clients and how I like to approach what I'm doing with my clients.
So I love that you're helping give these families clarity and the gift of these treasures and the gift of donating what they can't use or don't need to use, and having that continue to benefit other families. So that's incredible. Thank you. Keep doing what you're doing. I appreciate it.
Robin Cartwright: Thank you. Thank you so much for this chance. Thank you.
That's it for today's episode of The Wealth Development Studio. Remember, financial clarity is powerful. Do you need help with your financial plan? Go to pelicanfinancialplanning.com to schedule a call with me. Until next time.
