<p>Glad to hear that a move like that can be invigorating - and that you didn’t regret selling the only home your two sons have ever know. That’s the case with us - both kiddos were born and raised in this home. It’s funny, how when you’re ready - you’re ready. </p>
<p>We bought the lot (well, we started making payments on it) in 1999. Our boys were 9 and 12. We’ve had a LONG time to think about it. Since our sons (now 24 and 27) have known what our plan was since they were kids, it wasn’t a shock to them when we announced that we’d be moving in May.</p>
<p>^Yes, thinking about second home also. Done lots of research. But I do not want to quit working for awhile, actually the plan was to be kicked out, not really retire. My job is my biggest entertainment, everything else is just boring in comparison, but I added a hobby after the younger left, I had to, I have to stay busy and I do not like doing any of home chores. </p>
<p>We SHOULD have an empty nest temporarily, since our 15-year-old daughter is studying abroad this semester. But our 21-year-old son is living with us while he attends a local college, since he can’t live on his own due to his mental illness. But he’s a wonderful young man and helps out around the house a lot. I told him it’s nice having three adults in the house! So you never know what’s going to happen. We just try to go with the flow!</p>
<p>I am remodeling the upstairs “kids” bathroom and enjoying not having to rush, since no one is using it right now anyway. I tore out all of the flooring and took off the tub tile. I installed new tile and just finished the new floor and baseboards yesterday. It is turning out so well and it is nice knowing that it will stay clean since the youngest two are only home occasionally. Next project is to scrape off the ugly popcorn ceiling upstairs- I already did the downstairs and just had not gotten around to doing upstairs because there were always kids in and out. </p>
<p>Takeitallin, wow - you’re a real handyman/woman! Impressed. </p>
<p>Well, I am getting good at fixing my mistakes! I don’t necessarily enjoy doing the work, but it certainly saves a lot of money, and it is fun seeing the results!</p>
<p>Well, we got full-asking-price offer for our house in an hour and 45 minutes of it going on the market. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, if the deal goes through, we have to be out by late March… and there are no houses on the market! That’s the problem when you sell in a sellers market and then intend to buy…</p>
<p>Wow, that’s amazing! Less than 2 hours and full price - your area must be great!</p>
<p>A friend at work has had her house on the market so long I think the idea of selling it kind of left their mind…low and behold, it sold last week - now she and her husband are scrambling to try to find a temp living situation because like you, no houses on the market where they want to be! She said their realtor was able to give them some short term leads…</p>
<p>Our house sold in 24 days. We found a small rental house near our old neighborhood for rent on Craigslist. We’ve been in the rental for two years. It’s been much better than an apt although not much bigger than an apt. We will move out and move on to our new house in 3 months. We sold early on because we were afraid it would take a long time to sell. We wanted to be flexible with DH’s retirement date. Selling the house was the biggest part of the puzzle.</p>
<p>Glad it worked out, PackMom. We may be renting for a bit. </p>
<p>Empty nest is an interesting thing, with us we don’t know how long it will last (S is in first year of conservatory).
…It has allowed us to get the house in order after so many years of chaos, my wife was pretty much a 24/7 driver/organizer of S’s music stuff, homeschool, etc…and with my work hours, hard to really pitch in on that end, while taking care of the yard and house, things need fixing. </p>
<p>Being empty nesters for now is allowing us to tackle a lot of things, I am finally getting the basement finished off, laundry area and the rest work space/play space (in my case, trains…). We also are reorganizing, found all kids of neat things to organize stuff, clean out old crap, and make the house liveable. It also has allowed both of us to focus on healthy eating and fitness (hanging out waiting for our S, driving all over, meant a lot of meals grabbed on the go)…I event got all my tools organized and in a big rolling cabinet, makes doing stuff a lot easier:)</p>
<p>We don’t know how long this is going to last, with S trying to head into music, it could be we end up non empty nesters, don’t know if S will do a grad program, have no way of knowing, or if he is able to be on his own…knowing music the way we do, we kind of assume we won’t be empty nesters for some stretch after school…still. he will be a lot more independent, so it won’t be the same thing by far.</p>
<p>Our eldest graduated college last May, has a good job and an apartment about an hour away.
Youngest is now a soph in college, 400 miles away. He came home last summer, but this summer he wants to stay put, get a job and/or internship. He hopes to stay there after graduation, too; loves the area in which his school is located.</p>
<p>So – the nest really IS empty now, I guess. But all their STUFF is still here! I’d like a sewing/craft room, I’d like a real guest room. But that would require taking over the kids’ rooms. I have no place to put their STUFF! They both want to keep their stuff, but have no place to put it right now. Eldest lives in a small studio. We don’t have any room in the attic, no basement, no room in garage…don’t want to pay for storage. How long do we have to keep their stuff?!</p>
<p>How about put both kids stuff into one room? It’s silly you for you to have 2 rooms you can’t use most of the year except when they visit!! Or carve out an area of one of the rooms for your personal space - you can even put it back when they come home if it makes you feel better. :)</p>
<p>S was very considerate in swapping his single bed for a futon sofa that converts to a comfy double bed when he was in HS. His room is larger than D’s anyway and he lives 5000 miles away. D ‘only’ lives 2500 miles away. I do put things in their rooms when they are away. S did a pretty good job of stashing most of his things into his closet, so his room is a nice office/study/guest room. D’s room is smaller and still has lots of her junk from school and early college. </p>
<p>Agree that it makes sense to have the kids’ things in one place instead of sprawled in two rooms. :). </p>
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<p>This is the question that’s on my mind these days. D will soon be visiting us for a couple of weeks, and I intend to pin her down about the <em>stuff</em>. I don’t mind storing a reasonable amount of it until the day comes that she has a house, but I’d think that at least 90% of it can be disappeared.</p>
<p>When she went off to school in '09, I had planned to take over her room for my office. It’s the best room in the house. But now, I don’t know. The last 4+ years, it’s been comforting to walk past the room and see her stuff, and kind of feel that she’s still here in some way. I’ll see how I feel after the coming purge. </p>
<p>The great news for our empty nest is that when we went out to see her in the Midwest last May, she said, “I like it here, but I’ve decided that I’m a West Coast girl” So she’s coming home, after a fashion. At least, she’ll only be an hour and a half away by air. </p>
<p>For some unkown reason, the empty nest hit us much later (just this past academic year), several years after DS had left for college.</p>
<p>I guess one reason is that DS came home very frequently during college. We jokingly said that just because he “grew up” at a slower pace (e.g., do not have a GF in college), he gave us a few more precious years.</p>
<p>But now, he rarely came home (once or at most twice a year.) It was dawned to us during/after the past Christmas that DS is now much more independent from us. (Well…per CC standard, we were still accused by some to butt into his life too much at his age. But we are wise to stop our “intervention” as soon as he flied back to his own nest – even though it is just a dorm room, on the other coast.)</p>
<p>Also, we have completed the fix-up of our home and rented it out. We have “lost” this big project and have less to do.</p>
<p>We decide to keep the house (for now at least) but we ourselves have moved to a smaller place as we really do not need so much space any more. It is our wishful thinking that, in the future, both DS and we could move back to that house. I know it is likely just a fantasy which is highly unlikely to happen. </p>
<p>My parents kept my room as is for years when I was in college and grad school. I hardly ever came home after freshman year of college. When my Dad died and my mom had to sell the house, she went through my stuff, boxed it up, and it went to storage, along with a lot of my brother’s things (he had many more things.) Really, I should have gone through it myself. She was too generous. Most of it could have been disposed of. I think 2 boxes would have been quite sufficient.</p>
<p>I kept the stuff for years and years. Finally, when we moved a few years back, H and I disposed of a great deal of stuff. I can’t say I miss it, and I have hoarder tendencies.</p>
<p>We are busy now taking care of my father in law’s estate. We cleaned out his house. I have prepared a few boxes of my SIL’s things that she left there for the last 30-40 years. These are things like her college diploma, HS diploma and some pictures and other things. She hasn’t talked to us in years (nor to her parents before they died), but I really couldn’t see throwing out some of this stuff. If she doesn’t want it, let her do it herself. I will send it by slow boat to oblivion mail rate, and she can cogitate over it. She didn’t even call us when she got the letter that she is a beneficiary of the estate. What a piece of work. At least my FIL didn’t make her the coexecutor with my H, so we can clear everything up without an additional dose of insanity.</p>
<p>Every so often I weed out the clothing that is in my D’s closet that I know she will not wear again and give it to charity. I should do my own closet too.</p>
<p>Sorry for you loss, anothermom2. Sounds like you did the best thing re the SIL’s stuff, under the circumstances. I was just at my dad’s condo. He died almost two years ago, and now we are finally ready to rent it out. Emotionally I am in a better place now to do that. It does take some time. Now, what do I do with the empty nest? Art classes? Yoga? Take the laptop to Starbucks and write romance novels? What to do, what to do . . . </p>
<p>We continue to count down the days until DH’s retirement in May. I keep trying to visualize leaving the town we’ve lived in for 26 years. It’s so surreal. I find it hard to wrap my head around it and believe that it’s really happening. On the other hand, we’re really looking forward to living in our new house in a much more laid back location than our current busy suburbia. Feel like I have my feet planted in two different places right now.</p>