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# Survey: Sorting a Parent's Belongings Is a Growing Source of Strain for Japanese Families
- URL: https://www.nextchapter.sg/survey-sorting-parents-belongings-growing-strain-japanese-families/
- Published: 2026-09-14T14:08:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:13:43.000Z
- Author: The Next Chapter
- Tags: Asia

When a parent moves into care, it is rarely the paperwork that undoes a family first but the belongings left behind. Area Link Co., which operates Japan's Hello Storage rental storage business, published survey results finding that sorting and storing a parent's belongings has become a significant source of strain for families navigating eldercare.

The company surveyed 500 men and women nationwide in their 40s to 70s, alongside a separate group of 36 people already using Hello Storage to store items related to the start of a parent's care or a move into a nursing home or care facility.

Anxiety runs high even before the transition arrives as 76% of those who still had a living parent said they felt anxious about parental care or future living arrangements. While 68.8% expressed expected to struggle with sorting or finding space for belongings tied to a parent's care needs or facility admission. 

What proved hardest to part with differed by experience. General respondents most often pointed to keepsakes and mementos a parent valued and couldn't bear to discard (47%), followed by furniture and household goods too large for a care facility (44%). Those who had already lived through it painted a different picture: furniture and household goods ranked first (53%), ahead of mementos (44%).

Beneath the logistics, family communication or lack thereof emerges as a quieter problem. 68% said they had either never discussed eldercare with their family or parents, or had wanted to but hadn't managed to. Among those who had already navigated a care transition, 47% said they'd had concrete discussions beforehand, and a further 31% said they'd at least raised the subject lightly.

Area Link, whose storage business stands to benefit from the finding, reported that its customers most valued *the time* it bought them - 61% of Hello Storage users said it let them avoid rushed decisions about what to keep or discard. Smaller shares credited it with easing facility admission or moving logistics (31%), with selling or terminating arrangements on a parent's home (17%), and with accommodating a parent's own reluctance to part with belongings (14%).

Area Link said it has seen rising use of Hello Storage among customers aged 40 and above for exactly this purpose, and set the findings against the backdrop of Japan's ageing population. The strain is expected on the country's social welfare system as the postwar baby boom generation enters late-stage elderly care.