Timely question for me. One daughterleft home in the Spring of 2020, the other last fall. We just now replaced the carpets in both their old bedrooms. One will be my sewing/wrapping/craft room, the other a guest room. Since we also have another guestroom downstairs - there is always room for them if they want/need to come back.

I have a college freshman and college senior! I have pretty much kept their rooms the same…except I (with their help, ofc) did a huge purge before they left this fall bc we also had all of the upstairs bedrooms re-carpeted this fall. The rooms are gloriously clean with pristine carpet now, lol!

We haven’t downsized, nor do we plan to in the foreseeable future since we love our house & location and our master is down, so we don’t need their rooms for other purposes. If/when they have families, we’ll have plenty of room up there if they all want to come for Christmas or whenever.

I'm in the thick of it. Not downsizing. Keeping the bedrooms for the boys. Once they are married, may revist. But for now, this is home base. OTOH, I guess the real test for me will be when they are fully out of school and in their own place, hmmm ...

We downsized but ended up in a house with MORE bedrooms, lol! That wasn't intentional, they just came wtih the house we wanted. We have two guest rooms on the main level, both ensuite, and two downstairs that share a bathroom. One of the upstairs rooms has twin beds, perfect for older visiting grands, and the other has a full size bed and doubles as my office (if you've seen any of my recent threads you've seen it.) . So our five furnished bedrooms, will stay just as they are for the forseeable future. We have two dedicated offices downstairs also, one of which could be converted into something else, but what? I don't sew, we can walk to our community gym (which is beautiful), and I don't wrap presents any more, i bag them. don't have any hobbies that require a specialized room, but if I did and needed a bedroom I would redecorate it so that it could be used for my pursuits but also sleeping if accomodation was needed..

Hmmmm, I'm starting to wish we had carpet to redo. However, as much as I would love a craft room and maybe even a home gym, I just can't imagine them each not having their own dedicated space here. At least not yet. LIke you say, zalco, the real test will be when they are out of school and (hopefully) fully on their own.

I do think I need them to do a whole lot of purging this summer before they pack up and go. With C, and spending so much time at home, we all seem to have accumulated so much extra carp.

We have three empty bedrooms at the present time. Mine are well past college--one on to marriage. Most of their things they have already sorted and taken what they want. That isn't to say ALL their stuff is gone. I went through, made the rooms more adult/guest room but needed to get some things on the walls as they were bare. In each room I put up two pictures. One a single of them in their letter jackets and the other a collage frame with pics showing who they were. I grew up with little interaction with relatives far from the homes my parents moved from. I wanted any grand kids/significant others who come to have some nod to who my kids were. I up graded to queen beds so I am more set for married couples to visit. I too want a place mine always knew they could come and there would be room for them. I did LITTLE with their rooms until after they graduated from college..until then they were coming home for every break and holiday this still was their HOME. They didn't stop calling here home until they found their first job etc. I look forward to the day I have grand children who will find their parent's long forgotten treasures and take them with them.

I kept the kids’ bedrooms until they graduated college, had jobs and their own apartments. Their rooms are now guest rooms that sometime double as sewing/craft room.

It doesn’t seem like there was much time between them being out of the house and me buying a crib to have ready for visiting grandchildren.

We have a large ranch with three bedrooms upstairs and a bedroom, bath, family room, kitchenette and studio on the ground floor walk out. Our youngest is a college senior, living away in an apartment. We converted her bedroom to an office for DH, but added a pop up trundle bed (can be used as twins or a king). Youngest can either stay in the bedroom downstairs when she is home or the guest room upstairs. She usually chooses the privacy of the lower level. Older DD is married with a toddler and son has a SO. Now we have comfortartable sleeping arrangements whenever they're all home. I wasn't ready to convert her bedroom until she had been away for three years. I will say sorting through all her childhood stuff was very emotional!

My kids are 38, 35 and 30 and they still call our house home. My mother is 88 and she still calls the town she grew up in home. We want to be that for them always, but I have been thinking lately that if I was alone in this house it might be too big.. There are some beautiful homes here on the golf course that have four bedrooms, one upstairs with a good sized loft, full bath and storage room, patio and screeened porch, that could accomodate all the kids now that my mother has her own house less than a mile away. So there is that…

As our older two went to college, I left their rooms as is. Once our third was leaving the nest, we were building our "forever home." Purged a good bit then - aka took photos of their childhood artwork and let most of them go. They got to go through things first to get what they wanted - but I took with me to store.

We've moved twice since then, but our forever home had extra bedrooms for them and future grands. During our time there, our oldest moved back from CA and lived with us, then an apartment, then back to us. She moved with us to our last house and we gave her two rooms - bedroom and ladies lounge, as she called it, her living room. Two other guests rooms were claimed by DGS and DGD (one femine with canopy bed, the other masuline).

In our new home, those rooms came with us, but scaled down. DGS likes to sleep in the bunk room, the crib is in the more masuline guest room and DD2 (and her DH) likes to sleep in the canopy bedroom (same floor as crib) since she slept in this bed when spending the night with my parents. Nice memories.

So I am in the camp to keep their rooms more "theirs" as long as they are in college. Can paint, change carpet and/or bedding but mostly the same so when they come home, it feels like "home." Once working and on their own, then change as you want/need. Never feel guilty about this, as it is your house. Don't feel guilty about moving to another home either. Our current house is almost half the size of our last two houses, yet has the same number of bedrooms (5). One is a den, as it is really too small for anything other than a trundle or another bunk room and I walk through it numerous times a day taking the dogs to their grassy area out back. We even moved out of state, so they come and stay with us now, when there wasn't as much of that as I thought when we built the forever house since they were busy with year round classes, then work (one in CA, the other in IL - so not quick trips).

ETA: You might be surprised by what they want to keep and what they are no logner interested in keeping. Before our last move, none wanted their elementary or HS annuals. I didn't keep mine either. None wanted many things from their childhood boxes that were already minimized, so I went through again and kept some things they didn't. Both of the girls had containers with things from my parents and grandparents. They downsized those and took - I wasn't bringing their things to store this move. DS and DD2 stored some things in my sister's basement, but now DS doesn't want much of that. It's very frustrating! To have spent the time, energy and some money moving things...

So interesting to hear how everyone is or has dealt with the nest. Our house had been in the same family for 60+ years when we bought it. We made it clear to the sellers that we were going to stay and make it our home. They left us pictures of their lives in the house and many of the children that grew up here have stopped by to visit the house over the 23 years we have lived here. It makes my heart happy that they still think of it as their home.

arcy, your comments hit home for me. I guess I would call my younger years and family as fractured. I want the opposite for my kids and, maybe some day, grandkids.

While they were in college, the rooms stayed mostly the same. And a good thing, because one moved home and went to college locally, commuting, and then of course it went virtual for a semester, and kind of hybrid for another. He just moved into an apartment till fall, and the cat had shredded his bed so that’s gone. I will get a queen bed for his room. But right now it is the ”Marie Kondo” zone. I’ve collected all the bedlinens from the house in there, including pillows (4 people, now 2, why do we have over a dozen pillows?) so that I can disperse them to closets, donation, animal shelter, rag drawer, textile recycling. He might end up moving home, ya never know, so I will restore his room to a bedroom.

The other DS lived in the dorm two years and then an apartment so needed the mattress from his bed at home. That led us to dismantle his bed. Not long after, when I took over my parents‘ affairs, it became my ”office” and dumping zone for their papers, records, photo boards, etc. Ain’t nobody going to be sleeping in there now! When he comes up and stays overnight, he uses the guest room.

Our house is similar to Arcy's. The kids' former bedrooms function as guestrooms but each has a nod to its former occupant. My son's room has a tall, narrow bookcase with some of his favorite childhood books and games. One Christmas I gave each kid a framed photo collage of some of my favorite photos of them from birth to about ten and those hang in each room. My Nana used to keep her son's and daughter's high school graduation photos on the walls of their former bedrooms, and I remember being rather fascinated by them as a child.

When DD lived at university, her room/bathroom stayed exactly the same. Then we downsized … she lived with us as an adult, and did up her own room and bathroom the way she wanted it. When she moved in ’20, she didn’t want to take her bed, but took all other decor. I had a thread about it — Empty Nest Syndrome hit me hard. It still does. I miss her being home so much.

Anyway! Re-doing her room and bathroom into guest quarters helped my mental state. Shopping therapy, I guess you could say. And she had input, gave me ideas. Now when they (DD and BF) stay the night, she says she likes the room better. :)

I will say, if we had stayed in the house she grew up in, I’m the kind who would’ve kept her room as a shrine. And she would’ve said not to! It’s probably good that we moved. But I am glad I kept her bed … it’s pretty and it still feels like her room. :)

It's a tough one. Our house has felt too big for a while, with the eldest away at college and middle at boarding school. We have 6br, 5 full ba, 2 half, and nearly 8000 sq feet. When COVID hit, we had everyone home for at least a year maybe 1.5 yr (it's a blur) and dearly appreciated all the space; we even had three generous rooms we used as offices without implicating DR, LR or bedrooms. Once again, we are down to just one child at home (if you can call it that, given how much she is out).

I think,in an ideal world, bedrooms stay as they are until all kids are out of college (which hopefully is also when they get their own place.) But DH and I really don't want to be rattling around here as a couple when the youngest goes off this fall. So we will not be waiting another 4.5--5 years to downsize. I'm hopeful that keeping our summerhome, which we plan to do indefinitely, will continue to provide a sense of "home" (and one far closer to where the girls will be.) We have also decided (but go back and forth) that any new home has to be able to accommodate all 3 overnight and 2/3 in case they needed or wanted to move in; so our dream pied a terre is a dream still deferred. I'm also not moving away from the area until they are independent.

The girls have decided to share an apartment in the Boston area next year (their schools are near one another). When they move out this August, we will start the process of getting the house ready. Since they are not going into dorms, I expect them to take most/all of their stuff (it will be a 2br/2ba).

Funny how many people mention replacing carpeting! I have been dying to do the same Have you seen my DDs' rooms? We have been here 11 years and replaced it once. It is time again (in fairness it is a light colored wool sisal). I may have been influenced by watching Seaside, but I have decided to do painted wooden floors in their room. I like the look and expect it will be less than carpet.

Since our grounds are our most prominent feature here, we would probably list in May or June, the spring after the girls are out (so 2023). DS is already in grad school and should be done by then, DD1 will be half way thru and probably about to go abroad, DD2 will be most impacted. I thought our first house, where they all came home as babies, would be a forever house for them. I thought CT would be, too. They get over it. Their needs have always been well met, and will be going forward. DH is less sentimental about it --- he says they are about to cast us aside like old shoes, and rightly so. They are moving forward very fast and they won't be looking back, so neither should we.

We don't live in the home that my older son grew up in so everything that he wanted from his old room he took with him when he moved out many years ago.

Younger DS will graduate from HS this year. He is taking a gap year so will be living at home most of that time. When he goes to college next year I will just keep his room the same. We don't need any more space so I suspect it will stay "his room" until we move from this house. It's on the lower level and has it's own full bath and a private entrance so it could really be a studio Apt.

they are about to cast us aside like old shoes

Yup. This is it, isn't it. I have one (oldest) that is super sentimental and I'm pretty sure she will always come back to the nest. However, my youngest has always been what we call "prickly". She can't stand for others to touch her, let alone cuddle. She is super sarcastic about anything to do with sentimentality and I worry she will be less inclined to come back/visit if I mess with her space.

Would you believe my childhood bedroom is still pretty much untouched? Im in my 70s. My mother is ancient and lives with caregivers in the house they built in about 1960. The only thing that changed in my room is the draperies, which i guess disintegrated at some point. Oh yes, the bedspreads, too. Same goes for nearly everything else in that house.

I stayed in that room when i came home from college and when we lived farther away but never in the last oh, forty years or so!

I kept my kids rooms the same until they were truly launched. One is now a guest room and the other is my office. One of my sons once mentioned that nothing stays the same here. Thats not entirely true but I have changed everything since they left.

Older son lives far away and only comes home occasionally. He uses the guest room and is no tidier now than when he was 16. Younger son lives nearby and stays in his own place.

LOL Daisy,

Our girls are like that too. One is very cuddly and sweet and prone to tears, the other is a hard headed tigress. My son is the sweetest of all three! But even the tigress pleasantly surprises us once in a while. You are right though, it may not be a good idea to alter their habitat as it could impact migration patterns.

PS Does your DD do this? My DD is practically an air-kisser with us. But if we are out somewhere and she runs into a friend, they are all hugs! What? And then I will say, assuming it is a dear friend, who was that? And she'll say something like "just a friend of so and so I met at such and such once." Eye roll.

My life sort of blew up during covid, including a move away from the house in which I raised my kids, who are away at college now. It was incredibly difficult, but I was fortunate to land in a lovely house that's perfect right now. A bedroom for everyone and for which they chose the decor, etc., plenty of bathrooms, a basement that's set up as a movie/poker/hang out for them and their friends (they have strong ties to high school friends and get together often when they're all home from school). We've had some good quarantine memories made here, too. This house is also in a wonderful, walkable, fun location.

When I was driving one of them back to college last month, we were talking about the move, and I was feeling guilty. But at one point he simply said, "I don't come home to a house. I come home to you." (Cue the tears!) I still have mixed emotions about the upheaval, and especially during a pandemic. This isn't my ideal scenario, but I think my kids have still learned about maneuvering change and transition.

OMG, mtn, yes! My oldest and I are always falling asleep in each other's beds (after a long chat or watching a movie), but my youngest will not allow me within 5 steps of her bed and would not be caught dead getting close enough to even brush against my sheets. HOWEVER, even though her bedroom has two chairs and a sofa, she and her friends all hang out on her bed, happily running fingers through each others hair, etc. I guess I'm just happy that she can express and receive that with someone (but I do wish I could get a little of it now and then).

“I don't come home to a house. I come home to you.”

Oh my goodness, that is so sweet. I just got choked up reading it. 🥰 ❤️

Aww Feathers, that is just wonderful. What a kid.

Daisy, LOL yes! Kids are funny aren't they. Never ceases to amaze me the level of detail that must be in our DNA that kids with the same environment can be so different!

We are in the beginning stages of kids launching. For a long time, 6 people in 2200 square feet was perfectly fine but we are really beginning to feel the limitations of the space. My daughter is almost 21, working and going to school part time. She is in the process of moving out, but she is local. We are trying to figure out our boundaries as far as what we will store and keep and how much we need to push her to start going through all of the things in her room. Most of the time when she comes home, she is tired and just wants to rest and decompress. When she does leave, her older brother will probably move into that room. He works long hours, and is a bit of a homebody. The person who would benefit most if he got his own place would be the landlord because DS would hardly ever be there to enjoy it himself. I just bought a wonderful table to do projects at to put in that room once it clears out. DS can use it when he is home.

The other bedroom will still have 2 boys in it. One son graduates high school this year. That room will probably stay intact whether he goes to the local college for a year and then to a larger college or just goes to the larger college. The larger college is just a 2 hour drive away so he will likely be home for the holidays often and since that room is shared with his little brother, who has 3 more years of high school left, it will be easier to leave intact. Just clearing my daughter's room relieves some of the pressure of clearing the boys room too.

If our kids have left and need to return for a time, we can adapt. We are not likely to downsize any time soon (or even change houses), so they will still have the familiarity of the "family home." On the other hand, I came from a military family, with no notion of a particular place being home and for me, it has been very much like feathers son, I go to visit my mom, wherever she might be. I hope it will be the same for my kids.

When oldest decided to leave college (wrong choice) she came back home, youngest has switched in to larger room. Rather than have her take her sisters room, we swapped DH’s downstairs office with the upstairs bedroom.

We don't up adding a full bathroom to that room.

It’s a great guest room.

Currently, oldest DD and fiance use the finished basement when they stay over.

The larger bedroom is now my office, but it has twin beds so it too can be a guest room.

We were aware that it's better if you don't change out your college freshman's bedroom at home for at least the first two years, and so we didn't. And, he very much appreciated coming home to his unchanged room. He called it his "home sanctuary". And this was a kid who thrived at college 10 hours away! We actually left both our kids' rooms the same, except for updates they wanted, until they'd gotten their own places after completing grad school. We then turned DS's larger room into our (very nice) guest room. This past late-November, DH turned DD's smaller bedroom into our workout room, but left her single bed and window seat bed as is for guest overloads. And then . . . DD moved back home "temporarily" right before Christmas! There went our guest room, not to mention the closets and dressers in both rooms! She can work counseling clients from anywhere online but, hopefully, she'll be getting her own place close by soon!

Lol @mtnrdredux_gw…”cast us aside like old shoes!” That’s a very apt metaphor (similie? I forget the difference…)

daisychain I would say you are 'in training" but not an empty nester until all offspring are our of college, employed and establishing their life. But yes where they grow up they always feel is home. In fact losing the family home is a grieve-able event--according to the funeral director when my in-laws both died. It's a third death of sorts if it hasn't already happened.

I should have mentioned in my post that both our daughters are finished university and in stable careers (teaching and nursing.) As well, one lives 20 minutes away, the other 30 so instances of them coming home to stay are few and far between. Both stayed overnight on Christmas so they could imbibe (rare for them) and one daughter came home for a couple of days when they were working on her building and she had to sleep during the day for night shifts. The two guest rooms accomodated them both nicely.

We sort of downsized 7 years ago when DS2 had launched into a career. He had come back after 3 semesters of college and trained to be a firefighter. He still lived at home for another year, then bought a townhome with his fiance at the time. We were feeling like maybe we had too much room when during Covid, or son and DIL sold the townhome and bought a home under construction. They moved in for 4 months until that house was finished. Both DIL and my husband were working from home and we had A LOT of their stuff here. It was tight but I'm glad we were able to host them for those months. Their new home is about a mile away in the same neighborhood so no need for them to stay over. I would like to move at some point to a home with an in-law apartment so that we can try to create more independence for my older son who is disabled. We've never lived anywhere for more than 8 years so I may be getting the itch to move soon (don't tell my husband!). But it will have to be the perfect situation for us to consider it.