empty nest....biggest adjustment??

[marbel]

3 hours ago, cjzimmer1 said:

Count your blessings!

Between my oldest two boys, they have probably somewhere between 200-300 lego sets (and growing, this is still an active passion).  Plus the boxes from at least a third of them.  They are also collectors of board games.  Probably at least 50-75 of those(also still growing).  Then there is the drones.  At that is only the first two kids.  Yes they take some of them right away but since they are short on room, extras live at my house and get rotated or stored till they have more space.

 

We don't have quite that much, LOL, but a lot. I feel like, at least in my experience in my own family and observation of others, that that's a pretty natural progression - adult child moves out, doesn't have space for all the stuff, maybe feels a bit conflicted about some of the stuff* so some things stay with the parents for a while, and slowly over time it all gets moved out. Of course I know that's not how it works for everyone; that's just what I've observed. 

*My daughter who is moving out is conflicted about her bed. It's a bit of a childish-looking bed, but she is not really ready to get rid of it. We found a bed on the side of the road😀 that she's taking with her, and leaving her old bed at home. At some point, she'll either decide she can let go of it, or take it with her to the next place.  I'm happy to have an extra bed anyway so it works out. 

My husband's parents threw a lot of his stuff out when he was away at college, I was horrified when he told me that. Way to make your kid feel unwelcome in their own home! I would never do that. 

Edited August 17, 2022 by marbel

[fairfarmhand]

23 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:

What is this empty nest of which you speak?   🙄

 

 

I feel for my young adult kids. My oldest is launched, married and a mama. But my 20 year old? Unless she meets someone, the cost of real estate is prohibitive for her to move out for at least 3-4 years. I soooo wish she was able to have a small apartment and roommate but it’s not gonna happen until she graduates college.

[KatieJ]

We became empty nesters after kids at home for 34 years of our 36 year marriage. As one child moved out, they took their stuff with as the next one in line wanted that bedroom. Our 2 boys always had to share a room, so on the night his sister got married, he came home from the wedding and moved into her room!

I didn’t store much of anything for any of them. They left, their room became their siblings or a eventually guest room as our family expanded rapidly.

What was hard for me, was the previously mentioned lack of purpose. I was already a grandma when the  last one left home.  Being  a seamstress, I started sewing for grandkids and eventually sewed with a charity that made hats for the homeless.

DH was a workaholic, so we enjoyed quiet evenings at home and got a new rhythm going, just 2 of us. We joined a gym. 
cooking for 2 was hard to adjust to, but fortunately hubby doesn’t mind leftovers at all. We now cook differently, more salads, less meat and potatoes. We also enjoy going out for dinner more often. We really adapted quite easily.

Now retirement, that’s a whole other topic of discussion! 😳
 

[shawthorne44]

On 8/15/2022 at 4:25 PM, Jenny in Florida said:

We keep a write-on/wipe-off board on the 'fridge and just write down what we need/want. He snaps a picture of the board before he heads to the market, and groceries magically appear.

One idea.   We both have a List app on our phones tied to the same account.  There is shopping lists based on stores. so Grocery, Home Depot, Walwart, etc.  When we want to add stuff to the list we use the app.   The nice thing is that there is a cross-off feature.  So they are still on the list but crossed off.  So you can scan it to see if you are out of anything you've bought in the past.  Since the lists are the same account, they update on both phones.   
I also use it for packing.  

[regentrude]

Re food: I love food and enjoy being able to cook more what I love after feeding a meat-loving kid for 18 years.

We live in a small town and have short commutes, so I drive home and cook lunch, and dh bicycles home to eat. If there's too much, it gets eaten at night or the next day, no problem. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by regentrude

[Amethyst]

I think I had an empty nest for about five months. And then one of them came home. And then another moved home. Then one moved out again. Currently I have two kids at home, but I was told yesterday that one plans to move out in September. The other hopes to move out even sooner.
 

So, if one of yours is heading off to college, keep in mind that it may or may not be a permanent empty nest. 

[lynn]

Having had 3 boys I was use to noise.  When Navy kid, our youngest ds, left for boot camp the sudden silence was hard.  Really hard.  Not shopping like I had for years with having teen boys in the house and adjusting to cooking smaller meals took time.  We are close but not quite empty nesters but my dd is fairly quiet.  I'll miss her presence when she leaves but for now I enjoy our time.  Dh retired a few months after Navy kid left.  I had to make some adjustments to my daily and weekly routines but we figured it out and enjoy our time together almost empty nesters.  

[Grace Hopper]

On 8/15/2022 at 4:08 PM, KidsHappen said:

Getting everyone to take their stuff with them when they leave. For some reason some of my children seem to think that mom's house is where they store stuff that they don't need right now but might need someday. And some of them would absolutely die (figuratively of course) if got rid of their things but are themselves in no hurry to move it themselves. We are kind of in limbo right now but we are hoping that when it is time to downsize they will realize that we no longer have room for storing their stuff and will move it in a timely manner.

During my oldest couple of kids’ college and young adult apartment years, we were the clearing house for furniture when they shuffled living arrangements over the course of a number of years in college and young single apartments. We are finally at the stage where most of them are settled enough that they’ve all taken the pieces they want and I am selling the leftovers. 

On 8/15/2022 at 4:42 PM, MEmama said:

I was surprised that instead of being hit with the expected sadness or emptiness, I was stricken with a crushing sense of feeling *burned out*. I don’t think I’d had any sense of how much energy it has taken me to support DS and to hold this family together.
 

After my youngest graduated in May, I immediately crashed (like seriously, in the ER the day after graduation). I was just running full speed for so long and suddenly so much responsibility was…poof! (More on this farther down)

Expand the quote below to see my reply there. 

On 8/16/2022 at 9:21 AM, TexasProud said:

I guess I don't know what all this stuff is you are talking about. I mean their furniture stayed here and will.  I have a couple of under the bed boxes with their baby books, school stuff, etc. that will eventually go with them.  But other than that, for the boys in particular, there is no other stuff.  Now my daughter does have more nicknacks and stuff hung on her walls, but have no doubt that will go with her. Whatever she leaves when she graduates, she will know is eligible for goodwill.  But, I mean, they don't have stuff. So I am not sure what everyone is talking about.  That has not been an issue. 

***messed up my quoting so no space between multi quotes - I’m sure your kids left behind more stuff than you’re thinking of as theirs - perhaps it’s more viewed as “family” stuff. My kids are sentimental and have/had tons of memorabilia and as many have mentioned, the books, egads! Lotsa lotsa books. The big stuff though, for us anyway, is the apartment furnishings mentioned above. And when they come home after college, like each of mine did for a bit after graduation, there’s duplicate items (kitchen, bedding, bath, small appliances etc), and when they got married they got all new stuff so even more duplicate items - it accrues. We are finally culling out all that stuff. 

On 8/16/2022 at 10:23 AM, EKS said:

Adjusting the food thing and then adjusting back when one or both are here.  

But the bigger issue for me has been the thing that regentrude and Jenny in Florida talked about--a sense of purpose.  

As for the food thing - we waffle between dh still expecting a 6pm sit down dinner and dh going off the rails for all his favorite not-healthy meals that we couldn’t afford or chose not to serve when we were feeding everyone here. I am trying to retire from cooking, or at least divide the load, but his dietary indulgences are going to kill me. 😂 We need to get strict about that, I think a soon date night will be a Mediterranean cooking class. 
 

Now the big one - as several have mentioned - the sudden lack of purpose. Yes, it’s weird and makes me feel….old. I spent June (intentionally) and July (unitentionally) being very disengaged with life in a lot of ways. I felt like an astronaut who launched at high velocity, only to end up in outer space with no gravity.

Then about two weeks ago, I met someone who graciously shared her experience with me. She was a Very Busy Important Person for most of her life and when she retired, just fell into the worst sort of procrastination possible. I felt that! She pointed out that all her life she had deadlines and Stuff To Do For Other People driving her busyness. The next thing on her to-do list was a Panic Monkey that helped her produce under pressure. Her reason for sharing was that once she “retired,” and  there were no longer any Panic Monkeys, she (1) crashed hard physically, so admonished me towards self care to prevent the same from happening to me, and (2) had to create some gentle routines that fit her new life comfortably but productively enough to generate a sense of purpose and accomplishment without the driving force of being needed by others. (ETA I should have said …being relentlessly needed by others)

I started to pick up the reins again in August and am exploring opportunities. I do have to increase income at this point, for a few years anyway, but I’ve decided I am not just going to float around in the void for the next (hopefully!) 25 years. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Grace Hopper

[KungFuPanda]

I actually felt excited to get another chapter for myself. I feel young and I don’t understanding full retirement at 50. I can start now and have 2-3 more decades of working. I’ve been working out of this house for 25 years. I have time to do something new. I don’t want to get into a homemaker rut because I don’t get a ton of satisfaction from cleaning. I worked for a designer for a little while and now I run the office of a landscaping company (part time). I’m not sure what I’ll try next, but I probably want to jump again while it’s an employees market. 
 

Today I oiled a workbench that I built. I never had TIME for stuff like this when I was raising kids and I have this urgency to do EVERYTHING while I have my health. 

[Ellie]

On 8/16/2022 at 2:39 PM, Jenny in Florida said:

As do I, but each of mine has a couple of boxes of "their" special, beloved books that they hope to take with them "someday." These, therefore, cannot be simply integrated into my collection.

Same, but I have already sent those books to them. I was left with a good stash of books that I had sort of collected for the grandchildren, who would come and have Grandmother Camp for days at a time, and that never happened: only one grandchild, who lives in Seattle. So last fall I cleaned out those books and took them to a friend who has, um, 9 or 10 dc, so they can enjoy them.