We will be empty nesters after 8/23 and to be frank its has not yet fully sunk in for us. Having an only child where most of close friends have 2 kids we will be the first empty nesters. Not sure what to expect fully.
We have not yet discussed moving out of our current house. Love the neighborhood and house we are in so we may end up staying here for a few more years. We have to plan for de-cluttering the house as we have been in the house for 10+ years now and things have accumulated over the time.
One thing we did talk about was planning a visit every year to our parents as they are out of country and getting older. Now we typically go once every two years.
Good suggestion on have a facetime call with S24 once every week. I need to talk to him about it.
At first empty nesting feels like a really big change. I would caution making more changes as a result. Renting a home in some place for a month seems great! Maybe foster a dog temporarily or just wait. In the first 3-9 months, there will be unrealized needs, interest, demands that have not been able to surface because your karma dashboard has been full and not so empty. Give yourselves time to assess without new distractions…
The one area where empty nesting can be more challenging, is looking at your spouse every night at the dinner table. Both of you will want to/ benefit from having interests separately in the community and in friends you might not have had time for. Time at mid life to invest in yourself … your friendships and family you have not seen but want to…
What could this look like? Taking a knife skills class, going to goat yoga and going out with mom friends, going to a sports game, or concert or book group, or comedy night… I am sure this group can add more right in the local community to explore and or deepen.
I guess the main idea is to give yourself pause and time before jumping to add/make changes…
I was also a stay at home mom to an only child. And we moved the day after our D graduated from HS because of a work move for my husband. Lots of change all at once. We missed our D when she went to school (as did our dog) but it also felt like a do-over honeymoon period. We suddenly were able to do whatever we wanted. Every weekend was a staycation exploring our new city and the surrounding areas. I did go back to work for a while, but then Covid, and then found a walking group, volunteer activities, and plenty of ways to stay active. We are 6 years out from initially being empty nesters and still having a blast.
I am typing this on a sewing desk in an almost furniture-less apartment across the country from the family home. For a large chunk of high school my kid did sports training in another state. We rented a small apartment and did things on a shoestring to make this happen.
We are finally out of our lease at the end of the month. My kid and I have been spending two weeks selling furniture, arranging for donation pick-ups and drop-offs, and trying to figure out what to take back home with us. We have until Wednesday afternoon to finish up. My kid wants to drive back home (road trip!) with our belongings. (I probably should start a separate thread to ask questions about this.)
So, right now, we are too busy to be thinking much. This particular change is sad.
Luckily, my kid will actually be attending school in-state (but far enough away that living on campus has to happen). It almost feels like they’ve been away to college and are moving back closer to home, just in their own place!
Our nest empties on 8/18. Both of our girls will be 5-6 hours away. I’ve been trying to prepare for this for a while now, but I know it is going to be awfully quiet here in a few weeks. We are the first of our friends to enter this stage.
H and I have spent the last few months starting to develop some new routines, that I hope will fill some of the quiet spaces in our lives with the kids gone. We’ve developed a gravel riding hobby and go out on the weekends for long rides. We’ve started going to a weekly trivia night at a microbrewery in the neighborhood as well as a weekly yoga class. Separately, my H has joined a group that goes out for mountain bike rides biweekly. I try to play tennis and/or pickleball at least once a week with a couple of my friends.
We plan to do some more traveling than we have for the last several years. We are headed to a tour of the mighty five national parks in Utah in late September, followed by trips to see our girls in their locations (Boston and Rochester, NY). We are just starting to think about another short getaway in the spring.
We have no plans to downsize or relocate. Our home, which was always a little too small in the height of raising our kids, is right-sized for us (and a one story, so we can certainly age in place). We live in a very HCOL area, but we love it and we’ve never really fallen prey to lifestyle creep, so I think we can live here comfortably once retired.
We both have ageing parents in the area, so I imagine care and attention toward them will also take up time.
It is going to be an adjustment, but I think it will be ok. I also know that things can change…my D20 is likely to return home in a year or two so she can attend the University where I work and get her MSW for free. At some point, my D24 will spend two full semesters on co-op, it’s possible that could be back here in NJ.
T minus 10 days and counting! (Aug 11). My urge to spoil D24 and take her to all her favorite restaurants is at odds with my urge to be frugal. I’m trying to allow myself to spend by visualizing how much I’ll save on food by eating a lot of rice-and-beans maintenance meals when she’s gone. (Note: we got a great deal on college tuition, and this frugality is not strictly necessary–I think it’s just part of my self-improvement plan to help me think of things getting better and better in the future.)
P.S.–I mean–T minus 11 days! I hadn’t had my caffeine yet, and thought today was Aug 1.
Right there with ya Boro dad! Run to Rome, don’t walk! It’s magical!
Did Rome, Assisi, Florence and Amalfi last summer.
England is on our bucket list, too (my dad’s side immigrated from there)
If your kiddos are in DC you are sooo lucky! We lived there 6 years and loved every minute. Visit EVERYTHING there is in
DC and beyond… like Monticello and Mount Vernon etc.
PS Charlottesville is a great retirement place I hear.
Joining in:
This is month 11 of empty nesting, and it has been really hard for me!
We have a D21 graduating Duke next May and a D23 rising soph at Penn.
After D23 left for college I increased to full-time to fill the void of missing them but boy do I miss them both so much! For almost all of their school years I worked 2 long days and 2 half days, plus some weekend shifts(ie 33ish hrs a week) so I got to pick them up from school 3 days a week, and DH ‘s half day was one of my fulls—so 4 afternoons during the school week was one of us home with them. It was such a blessing to have so much time with them and still have a rewarding career. After covid my work shifted to a bit more, and I lost one afternoon with them, but they were busy afterschool almost every day anyway, so we all got home at a similar time.
Since college:
We travel to see each of them a couple times a semester, typically a day trip(even for the one about 4 hrs away), but we also went to Italy last fall to see D21 abroad. We will continue to as long as they let us! They have both been away all summer working/interning out of town so that has made it doubly hard, as it is the first summer with both gone. They have 10days when they are home together and we can take some time off work, right before they go back to college (they only had 2 days in May).
My inlaws live a couple miles from us: they moved here when we were in medical residency to help us with the girls, so now that our schedule does not revolve around various extracurriculars/ performing arts shows the girls did, we try to have dinner with them most weekends we are home. We are youngish, starting a family at 28 and then we were 49 when we became empty nesters last year. Consequently we have about 20 yrs of work left (target is age 69 for retirement, maybe earlier, depending on how it shakes out). Our medical practices are here, definitely no moving or anything like that is planned! A second home is not out of the question some day, once we see where they settle, though that may not be practical.
I have zero advice because I haven’t figured out empty nesting! I have increased some community volunteer work and am supposed to be running more and training for a race, and DH is supposed to be playing in more tennis tournaments: it is a work in progress!
Everybody in our house is sad today, including D24, but we’re keeping it cheerful and busy. She leaves in 2 days. We’ve had the great joy of having 2 professors’ schedules while she’s grown up, so although we’re authoritative parents, we’re also her closest friends at the moment. I am looking forward to hearing about it when she discovers new friends and interests soon!
How are the new empty nesters holding up? What have you been up to? Any new routines? Any silver linings to your new situation that you hadn’t anticipated?
We are doing fine here, for now. My kids both attended sleep away camp for many years, so I’ve had practice having them gone for weeks at a time. I think as the period of time that they are gone drags on, especially once the weather turns, I will start to feel differently. But, for now, we are out and about doing our summer things. We are getting ready to take our first couples vacation in 20 years, leaving at the end of this month.
It’s not really an unanticipated silver lining, but it’s still a thrill…every time I poke my head in my girls’ bathroom and see it in its pristine and spotless state. It’s the little things! Also, I have been surprised by how much less I am spending at the grocery store.
So, in celebration of the empty nest, we skinny dipped in our pool this weekend
We also are in the process of cleaning out kids’ rooms so we can replace nasty carpet, cleaned out the pantry and closets, rearranged furniture, and I made a dinner that neither of my kids would eat. (Spaghetti! My kids won’t eat spaghetti, of all things. D24 is pescatarian, and S24 doesn’t like tomato based sauces)
So, it’s only been a few days, and both kids are checking in and doing well, but we have been celebrating the upsides and being happy that they are settling in well and off doing what they are supposed to be doing
I am doing okay- not great but not terrible. The house feels very quiet. I am making sure I get out a lot. I’ve enjoyed doing some cleaning out and having the rooms stay clean. I get sad at the grocery store realizing I don’t need to buy certain things and need to scale other things down but it does make dinner menus so much easier.
Girls have been great at staying in touch. They are happy as a whole but a bit overwhelmed with the newness of their situations (D22 is finding study abroad similar to starting college alll over again- so many things to learn and do).
We leave for Parents weekend tomorrow. It’s crazy that it’s just 3 weeks after dropoff but we’re all happy about it. H and I are then doing a roadtrip to explore where to move in the Soring so that’s exciting.
We dropped her off again on Monday (yesterday) after we got to have her at home for two days. I’m doing okay, and I feel like she’s doing okay. My spouse hasn’t fully accepted it yet, I think! He’s texting her too much, but I’ll let them work it out. I didn’t realize until we had her back how very high-energy an 18 year-old is, compared to me. I think it’s let me see all of them (people her age) as just bursting with energy they have to let out. At least that’s why they seem to go through so many emotional ups and downs, from my vantage point! Day-to-day stuff really matters to them, which I find very sweet. For me, day-to-day stuff is just in maintenance mode these days. I get done what I can, but I don’t get really upset unless it’s truly upsetting. This probably sounds like grade-A psychobabble! In short, the empty nest has made me reflective.
Physically? Tired from the past 1.5 months of moving, and nowhere near finished.
Been so busy that now the “new dynamic” is kicking in. Due to sports training, either one or both of us were living with the kid (either at home or out of state). Now, the kid is at their dorm and we are home together. Hasn’t been this way in 17+ years. It’s wild.
We drove up to visit the kid on Monday during Labor Day, and really appreciated the lack of traffic there and back. Kid is too busy to come home (getting used to the volume of work) and that’s okay with us. We’ll stop by whenever and do errands.
Perhaps some people might find that off-putting, but I’m from a family that pulls together to help. Even if it’s just a 15-second phone call question or a text.
Kid is still in a dorm that needs storage and a fridge, and after any campus auction this week we will be helping out with making the dorm room more functional. Kid’s roomate lives much closer to home and has been home a few nights already in under three weeks (prefers sleeping and showering there when possible) so my kid has had time to de-compress and recharge.
Such a freaky transition! Kid really is off elsewhere doing young adult things!
