“Just put them somewhere” - sounds like you’ve got a green light to put the spindly little tables in a dumpster! Dumpster is “somewhere,” right? 
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Is there a patio? Front porch? Surely those are great “somewheres” as well. Front porches and patios are lovely spots for tables and a bench. Even a chair or several would be great in a patio and some front porches.
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Not if they are upholstered
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MIL has a problem with spatial relations
We have three rooms in our house roughly those dimensions.
Room one:
Queen bed
Two nightstands
Armoir
Chest at the foot of the bed
One large upholstered chair
Not space for anything else.
Room two:
Queen bed
One nightstand
One small chest of drawers acting as a night stand
Triple chest of drawers
One upholstered chair
Could potentially put a small table near the chair because the room is a rectangle but then it would block getting to the chest of drawers.
Room three we use as an office:
Desk
Two occasional chairs with a table between them
Bookcase
Side table for tv
Side table for display items
Sounds like the empty bedroom is going to end up as an impromptu storage area.
Good luck. You are a saint!
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That would be great, except it can’t be. The bedroom furniture that’s in the primary is being moved to the second bedroom.
That bedroom is 11’8” x 10’10” In there she wants:
A queen bed
One nightstand
A chest of drawers
A bookcase (already somewhere in the room)
A chair (Mil: “We hope. If it won’t fit, just put it somewhere.”) 
The sad part about this is NO ONE is ever going to stay with them. I specifically asked about this, and mil said she doesn’t ever expect to have overnight guests, but she’d like to be able to. Let’s face it - Bob knows he has to hold onto his bedroom furniture in case mil divorces him.
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They are upholstered - not outside pieces.
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The good news is that furniture stacks. You can direct the movers to make a tower in a corner– the little end tables go top to top as high as they can go. The bench can go top to top on the bureau. Etc.
I’ve never seen a senior living situation where the custodial staff doesn’t show up with hand trucks or similar to remove the %^& from the living units.
My mom insisted on SO MUCH STUFF. The very lovely cleaning people sat her down after move-in and explained that if there was a hazardous situation with overcrowding, no room to run a vacuum cleaner, the entryway to the bathroom jammed with an extra bookcase that you needed to carefully walk around and no room to carry a bucket to the bathroom– management’s policy was “OK to skip the cleaning”.
That lasted for two weeks. And then we called the custodial staff to get rid of the bulky stuff (told them to grab what they wanted for themselves). And then after the first fall (which I hope you don’t have) the occupational therapist came in for the standard eval and then got rid of MORE.
So your job is to jam everything in. MIL seems capable of calling the office to get help to remove the excess. Or calling back the movers to haul it off to a storage facility!
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Stack everything that doesn’t fit comfortably in the room on top of the bed - they’ll get a real idea of how much extra stuff they have.
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Well, if no one is going to use that second guest room anyway, just have the movers start stacking the extra things in that room on top of other furniture.
I hate that you and your H are going to be responsible for furniture Tetris.
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OP and H are responsible for seeing that the truck is unloaded. Anything beyond that is mission creep in my book!
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Haha! As a Home Health PT, I can tell you stories of so many houses I go into where there is just a narrow path through the towers of furniture and treasures. And these are not even the homes where people had to downsize.
And then…wait for it…the person needs a walker, or even more fun a wheelchair.
I adore my elderly patients. But it is really a challenge.
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There is an interior decorator that works with new residents at the CCRC. Mil has two large, tall, rocking swivel chairs she is bringing. Decorator told her those were hazardous and not to bring them. She is bringing them anyway. I think they stopped working with her because Bob and mil thought they knew better.
I’m texting with mil this morning. I asked about a desk in the living room. It’s SO dumb. Big and awkward with no chair at it. It’s in front of a large window. For all intents and purposes, they’re using it as a side table. Too tall/too big. I asked if it was supposed to stay there and who would be using it. And did add that it was none of my business. Her response was, “We don’t have any other place for it, so we’re keeping it. It won’t be used as a desk.”
They have two other desks. One in the bedroom he uses as an office and one they think will be in the primary bedroom.
When dh took her down for the family of origin clean out, they measured all the furniture pieces she used brining. She clearly didn’t use that meticulously gathered information in their planning at all.
Edit: there is a leather tufted desk chair in there (not on wheels) that is in the living room. But it’s not at the desk. Just stuck in some random place
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Yup, there’s nothing like having to deal with an elderly parent’s mountain of stuff to cure oneself of any desire to hang onto your own mountain of stuff.
I don’t know what it is about the elderly and their intense desire to hang onto every single piece of furniture. My grandparents were like this. Stuffed their room in their nursing home to the gills where you could barely walk around the bed. Nursing home staff got that addressed rather quickly though.
MIL did a lot of that, too. Your comment about all of the spindly little tables made me laugh. I think there must have been at least 8 (EIGHT!) different spindly little tables of MIL’s that we can to deal with. 
Like…WHY do you need so many tiny tables that don’t actually hold anything other than ONE SINGLE PLANT?! LOL.
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I think the reason old people keep too much stuff is because they remember when they bought it and they want to keep remembering those good times.
We own two huge overstuffed chairs that used to live in our LR but really crowded the space. DH of course wouldn’t let go of them so they’re now upstairs in two different bedrooms. Still way too much and way too huge, IMO.
If/when I live in this house on my own, there’s gonna be a lotta changes made!!
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After reading the latest posts, I’m itching to throw something out!
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Amen to that. You’re singing my song. 
When my MIL passed away, SO MUCH of her furniture ended up at our house. DH brought so many of her chairs into our house. TOO many! Oh the random pieces of furniture, like:
- rickety wooden rocking chair that’s stained. DH put it in our bedroom right next to his dresser
- a 2nd wooden chair. Also now in our bedroom, sits near his bedside table. Side note: WHY DO WE NEED 2 EXTRA PLACES TO SIT IN THE PRIMARY BEDROOM! We’ll sit on the bed! There’s already a big honking padded bench at the foot of the bed for pete’s sake!
- a Pepto Bismol pink upholstered chair that MIL used to have in her bedroom. Not an antique. I hate pink. DH doesn’t like pink. He at first tried putting it in our bedroom and I vetoed that. Now it’s in his office/man cave covered in his man cave clutter. I’m fine w/this because that room has a door we can shut so I don’t have to look at it.
- a tall upholstered chair that MIL had recovered several years ago in some of THE ugliest fabric you’ve ever seen. Her cats kind of wrecked it & the re-covering job wasn’t very good so the chair is in shambles. This, too, is in DH’s man cave/office. Also covered in his clutter.
- yet another tall upholstered chair, recovered several years ago in a floral print that’s reminiscent of part of a French Impressionist painting. That’s in the garage.
- a matching chair same as above, but that one sits outside on our covered back patio. both of these chairs were also shredded by MIL’s cats. DH refuses to get rid of them and has said for 2 yr that he’s going to have them repaired. Meanwhile, the style of these chairs is very formal, foofy & over the top and the opposite of our home’s more casual decor. There’s no room in the garage for ugly chair #2 and Spousal Unit won’t part with it.
- a long cedar chest that’s sitting in our entryway/hallway near the front door. 1 of the short legs on it is shorter than the other 3 so it wobbles. And there’s a stain on the top of it. AND the inside of it smells unpleasant so there’s no way that I’d ever store anything in it. It’s there because there’s no room in DH’s man cave/office and…well…resistance is futile.
Don’t get me started on all of the DVDs we still have that we’ll never watch again because everything’s available to stream online.
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Let’s temporarily turn this into an interior design thread! Lol.
The floor plan is not reality. You can see from the photos that there are three windows on the north wall, with a small one around the corner on the east wall. Also, the patio door rendered on the short west wall of the living area is not a door, but another window. The brown leather recliner is now in the corner where the Christmas tree was.
The two chairs flanking the desk are actually dining chairs and will be moved and placed flanking the buffet she’s bringing. That part of her plan is good. She’s bringing the two larger cream upholstered chairs that are in the photo with the red rug. There is also that random tufted leather desk chair in the living room somewhere.
Her biggest challenge, IMO, is wanting the sofa directly across from the TV.
I don’t have specific dimensions for the room, unfortunately.
And, yes, the sofa was hanging at least 18” beyond that short wall. They have since removed the tables in the corner and shoved it down and crammed it in that corner.
I have thoughts on furniture placement, but please feel free to share yours! Mine would not have the sofa directly across from the TV, however. It IS a challenging space.
This did me in. The Pepto Bismol pink chair in the man cave
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@Hoggirl it seems that every question you’ve presented to MIL or every suggestion you have made she has shut down or not given any helpful response. You are doing the biggest favor - being at the house when the truck arrives. At that point I think your obligation is simply to get things physically in the house enough that you can shut the door - and that is it.
MIL and Bob will face the music when they open the door upon arrival. It’s not your job to redecorate for them or to lift and move heavy things yourself. And the moving company also cannot be held to a point to figure out how to reconfigure a room.
I’m all for helping family and I probably often get taken advantage of. But unless MIL is willing to relinquish to sound decisions well, why break your back?!
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I would move the big sofa under the north windows and then have the opposite small corner wall and then work the smaller pieces around that. But, it’s not your problem.
FWIW, that looks like a lovely condo layout. But there is no way all the stuff she wants in the bedroom is going to fit in there!
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