<p>Thanks VeryHappy. I think you know that one of the transition steps I’m going through now is selling our house…</p>
<p>Yeah . . . that makes two of us. Well, I don’t know if we’re actually selling our house or just sitting with our house on the market for a while . . . </p>
<p>Also, be careful of Thanksgiving. I found that when they came back, we had to re-adjust to having them around again. It gets rocky for a while.</p>
<p>It’s 15 days until I take my only homeschooled girl. Some days I’m so distracted and “mourning” that I don’t know what to do!</p>
<p>I think it does get easier. You eventually find a “new normal.”</p>
<p>Why do people feel the need to sell their home once kids leave for college? Ohiobassmom: are you selling NOW even though you still have a D at home?</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand this. We have one in college starting soph year and one to become a h.s. Junior. I am thinking of finishing the basement (it is finished now, but I want to do a better job with newer carpeting, a guest room and full bathroom).</p>
<p>Kids come back home! They bring girl/boyfriends, h.s. and college friends, wives/husbands eventually, grandchildren…why do so many people feel the need to sell their homes? What am I missing?</p>
<p>We “downsized” this last year during S3’s senior year. S1 is graduated and employed. S2 will be a senior in college. Plenty of room for visiting with friends, but moving into our new home represented a new beginning for DH and me, and will be a great place for the kids…and their eventually? However, ahem, its been a year, and haven’t sold the “old” house…</p>
<p>I’m selling the house for a variety of reasons, not only because S is going away to college.</p>
<p>I’m thinking less of downsizing as getting a better layout and a more energy-efficient replacement. With ShawD moving back to our fair city, we have been seeing her more often because she can take public transport back to the house (slower than driving, but works) and a neighbor works near her school. So, I think we’ll stay in our existing house for a while or, pounce if the right house on the river in our neighborhood (likely a tear-down where we can build the house we want) comes on the market. Either way, we’d be in the same neighborhood for a while.</p>
<p>I’ve also been thinking about getting a house in a warmer place for winter, but I have been thinking that it could be worthwhile to do that in a place nearer where one or both of the kids live, if they end up in different places.</p>
<p>^^Oops, sorry Ohiobassmom, I didn’t mean to just point my question at you. It does, however, seem that many people tend to sell their house as soon as their children are off to college and I was wondering what for!</p>
<p>Hi Shawbridge: we do have a place in FL that is shared by my siblings & I. We will most likely not move out of our home for awhile either, depending on where each kid settles. If S1 had his way, he’d be living in a foreign country somewhere, so I doubt we’ll follow him! 
As far as layout, we’ve got it. It costs so much to keep updating things here…new sectional sofa, new lighting, etc. I’d rather enjoy this house that it has taken so long to decorate! Anything “extra” just goes to more vacations!</p>
<p>I’ll put in my two cents about why people sometimes move after their kids leave for college. In our case, we’ll have three kiddos in college/grad school. The two in college will be (hopefully) co-oping in the summers; the kiddo in grad school will be doing her clinicals in the summer so her program will run straight through the two summers of her grad school. In other words, the kids won’t be home for super extended periods of time anymore. We’ve dealt (happily) with a big, hot, time-consuming, money-consuming, energy-consuming yard for over twenty years now and are ready to spend our weekends doing something other than hedge-trimming and mulch-spreading. We also want less house to heat, cool, and clean - definitely don’t need five bedrooms anymore! :). So, for us, downsizing represents a new phase in life that will give us more time to enjoy new hobbies (kayaking, but that’s another story), each other, and less time spent at Home Depot! Our kids will always have a spot in our house - just a smaller spot!</p>
<p>No worries chocchip. </p>
<p>Some of my reasons have to do with huge yard and the work of maintaining a large home, for sure that’s huge. Wherever we downsize to - hopefully not far at all - will still have a place for S to come home to. I just want less “extra” space (formal dining, front parlor, etc…not used anymore at all) and for sure less/no yard…I am SO over pruning, mowing, mulching, weeding, etc etc.</p>
<p>And S was my go-to lawn mower…D hates it.</p>
<p>In addition to all those reasons, I’m selling so I can free up some equity and invest it. It’s not appreciating in the house.</p>
<p>I’m not selling - but if I could I’d get a bigger house. For some reason now that the kids are gone the house feels tiny and cramped and I want more room. Another reason is that we bought the house to raise the kids in. We thought it was a kid friendly neighborhood, we have a large yard, and we didn’t mind the smallness of the house since each kid had their own room. Now they are gone and don’t even want to visit because our town is too “boring” - it’s feeling boring to me too and I’m stuck with it! I want to go somewhere exciting and do something fun and new, not just sit in this cramped house filled with memories and peeling paint. </p>
<p>That might be the “real” reason - there so many memories in this house, good and bad; they get a fresh start - why can’t I have one too?</p>
<p>PhotoOp, you’re allowed to do something new and exciting too. Move if you want to, even if it’s across town.</p>
<p>So, we’re selling the house, and S1 is moving across the country tomorrow for a 4-year graduate program. His FB post: “Last night in the house I grew up in.”</p>
<p>So, so sad. But selling the house is the right thing to do. He had a good childhood here.</p>
<p>Right?</p>
<p>Very Happy - right!!!</p>
<p>Thanks, SJTH. I know. But it’s still so sad. S1 is my sensitive child. He is very aware of these momentous moments.</p>
<p>Since I never upsized I don’t need to downsize so I’m planning for a new master bedroom/bathroom addition. I also haven’t finished putting in all the gardens I’d like in the back yard and I want to add a patio off the deck and put in an outdoor kitchen. All this (except the gardens) need to wait 3 years until son graduates. In the meantime I just dream.</p>
<p>VH: DH felt the same way as your son when his parents sold the house he’d grown up in…and he was 29 years old at the time. Your son might have felt that way no matter when you sold the house.</p>
<p>I wonder how long it takes to get that new normal. I just came home from dropping off the last child at college, 2500 miles away. We dropped him and his older brother off, worked a week on the east coast, and now I walked into an empty house. My dogs aren’t even back yet, though thankfully my husband comes home in an hour or so. And I feel so full of grief that I can’t even stand it. The sun is still out, it’s a beautiful day, the house is clean and the yard is neat…and I feel so incredibly sad. I didn’t think it would bother me so much.</p>