Jon Wagner is in a house.

 

But it’s not Jon’s house. He didn’t buy a single thing in it. Not the piano or the books or the rolls of toilet paper under the bathroom cabinets. But he’s responsible for every single object. In the next two weeks, he must find everything a new home. 

 

There are the easy parts — think of what a mover would do: the dining room table will get hauled into a moving truck. The set of crystal wine glasses will be appraised and sold. 

 

But then there’s the rest. The objects that fill up the cracks of a life: photo albums, holiday decorations, letters, and mementos.  

 

Jon’s clients have hired him to free themselves of their stuff. Sometimes they’re elderly. Other times, they’re hoarders, unable to make sense of what should stay and what should go. 

 

So, Jon and his team (which today is really just him and a guy named Adam) descend. At Integrated Move Management, the two of them will take sometimes as little as two weeks to walk into a house and make it look like nobody ever lived there. They become a trusted third eye in a process that so often needs one — an entity that emerges in this grey zone of not exactly owning but not not owning this house of stuff.   

 

We're going to take a walk through the house, examine some of these things that aren't Jon's, and in the process, figure out how to let things go.