How long after your kids moved out

[lynnerself]

         did you redecorate their rooms?

The thread on empty space got me thinking.

DD and DS are done with college. They have been out of the house for a long time. Now they come home to visit every 2 or 3 months.

They still have a lot of stuff here. Beds and bedding from high school. Posters and stuff on the walls.

At what point do I redecorate these bedrooms?

[constanz22]

Yesterday

[raeoflyte]

I moved out 15 years ago and my mom just went through things... I swear I've offered, but there stuff just went on top of what I'd left.

Don't wait that long.

[Deleted]

I'd put the idea to the kids, just so it doesn't come as a surprise...

[Malarky]

DS is a freshman in college.  I gutted his room two days after he left.  It's still his room, and he can come home and live here for as long as he likes, but the damage to the woodwork and walls has been fixed and everything has a fresh coat of paint. 

He sorted everything he wanted to keep before he left and it's all neatly stored. 

We were having a foreign  exchange student stay with us for a couple of weeks which was a great motivator. 

[Deleted]

This got me thinking.  It's been 22 years since I moved out and since that day, I've never once spent the night in my parent's house again.  Not once. Of course, they only live about 20 miles from me, so driving home after a visit isn't a big deal.

I honestly don't even remember going back into that side of the house to check out my room, so I'm not sure when (or if) it was ever redone.  About 7 years after I moved out and both my younger brothers were gone they built a new house. 

[Sum Dum Gai]

I shared a room with my brother until I moved out.  He was probably throwing my crap out and taking over completely while I was still pulling out of the driveway.

[Deleted]

I have a similar situation.

My two older kids are gone (we have 4), but DS1 is a humanitarian aid worker, so even though he's 27 now, this is still his "home base". We did up the basement for him before he left for college, so it's not like he / his Stuff is occupying a room we want to reclaim. When we did that basement room up for DS1, all the other kids "bumped up" a room.

So then DS2 got DS1's downstairs master bedroom. We WOULD like DS2's room back. But times are very rough here, and although he has a studio in Paris, he comes home every weekend, and sometimes more often. He was hospitalized last week (thank goodness he's fine) and he was SO happy to get out of the hospital and come back "home". 

We had visions of taking over that downstairs master ages ago ... but life is hard here, both kids are self-supporting, but not really "settled" yet, if that makes any sense. There are also other issues: DH is a hoarder, so if I gave him DS2's bedroom to use as a music room/ office, as we had planned, DH would just fill it up with crap. I HATE clutter so I'd rather leave it available to DS2 than have DH fill up yet another room with more crap.

The other issue is that we still have 2 out of 4 kids here FT, one still in college, the other in HS. 

This said, we sometimes use those two mostly empty rooms for guests, when we have a bunch of guests (and we do sometimes). So my rule is, those rooms MUST be neat. DS1 is neat by character. DS2 is not, but he "gets" that that's part of the reason we are OK with leaving him the downstairs master even though he uses it rarely, so he is good about clearing things out too, even if I need to give him a hand from time to time. 

Lynn, do both your kids come at the same time? Are they the same sex? Could you "reclaim" one room, and then turn the other into a guestroom / their bedroom? Is there a basement / attic / outside space that would be easy for them to access that they could call their own?

Dunno, just thinking out loud. 

[Deleted]

ETA: Mine are probably about your kids' ages, 25 and 27. I am a beech, I make them go through their furniture / closets / bedding / posters every year. I would never make them get rid of anything they didn't want to get rid of, but I DO make them question whether they want to keep (whatever) or not. 

[lynnerself]

The main reason that I haven't done anything is that I don't need those rooms.
And the rest of my house need work too.

They mostly are just used for the kids when they come home for visits.

And I'm not sure they are gone!  DS moved back for 3 years after undergrad.  He has been informed he is not moving home again.

But DD is thinking about changing  careers and has motioned staying here while she picks up some undergrad classes that she needs and does some low paid PT aid wok so she can apply to Physical Therapy school.

[Deleted]

If my kids were just away at college, I wouldn't have made drastic changes to the bedrooms. They moved out, as in moving on with their lives, so to me that's different.

One lives within walking distance of my home, one is less than 5 minutes away by car. So they don't have to travel to visit home.

So I didn't see a point in leaving the rooms as they were. I don't get it when the "kids" rooms stay decorated exactly as they left it for decades after they move out. Maybe that only happens in movies.

[teen persuasion]

We haven't been able to reclaim any kid's rooms, yet.  One is graduated from college, two more are in college now.

Just today DH & I were discussing Xmas break and the need to have rooms ready for all the kids - DD1 will probably get leave for the first time in over a year, so her room needs to be put back together (DH began taking things apart months ago when he got the urge to repair something), DS2 will want a place to sleep and DS4 has begun squatting in his room in an attempt to distance himself from DS5.  At least DD3's room is largely untouched, except for the cat's redecorating attempts.

[ZaireinHD]

Nov 2, 2013 19:22:15 GMT -5 Sum Dum Gai said:

I shared a room with my brother until I moved out.  He was probably throwing my crap out and taking over completely while I was still pulling out of the driveway.

I started off sharing a room with my brother - then we got older he took the smaller room. then I moved out and he took my room (quick), and his room went back to being the office for my parents.

suggest to leave the rooms as they are and when the need does come up for the space. change your sons room first as he will not be needing it anymore.

[Gardening Grandma]

Oh hec, I didn't wait til they moved out.  When my oldest came home for Christmas, the first thing he saw was a sign. in the window,  "Room for Rent"!!! (I was kidding)

[Spellbound454]

Straight away....They helped me pack up their things and what is still here is stored in the loft or in the wardrobes.

The bedrooms are nice and fresh and clean..... and they can come and stay whenever they want.

If know there is dust bunnies and half clad lady posters in there... it will just get on my wick.

[cronewitch]

I don't have kids but if I did I would start when they were about 16 referring to their former room as my future sewing room or something. They would get the point when told to go to the future sewing room they were in trouble.

I didn't have much of a room it was just a bed with a built in dresser and two feet of floor space. My brother had a mirror image room and we had a curtain between we left open in the day time. I imagine the took over my space then the next year he left home and the parents moved the mobile home to the city. Then they bought a real house I and I rented the mobile from them in a park. I stacked the kids room beds to make a really tall bed for my cat then had a dog on my brother's side with her 7 puppies.

[alabamagal]

DD22 moved out a couple of months ago.  There is still some "stuff" in her closet.  She has the old master bedroom in our house and has a Queen size bed.  Her room is now the guest room.  It could use a new paint job, but is fine for guests.

DS21 is in college.  We sold his kids bed when he went away to college (bunk bed with futon on bottom).  We use his room as spare hobby room, so don't care about the decor.

DS19 also in college.  We repainted his room and bought a double bed.  It is now neutral color.  It can be a second spare room.  It is his room now, but can be used as another spare bedroom if needed.

[Deleted]

Nov 2, 2013 19:22:15 GMT -5 Sum Dum Gai said:

I shared a room with my brother until I moved out.  He was probably throwing my crap out and taking over completely while I was still pulling out of the driveway.

Yeah, that was me when my brother moved out. I had been sharing a room with our mother for 4 years.

When I went to college, my room stayed the same until end of the fall semester. Then, the apartment next to ours had a fire and the firefighters went in through our shared wall to put it out. The apartment complex didn't have another 2 bedroom available, so my stuff got packed and put in my grandparents attic and my furniture got distributed amongst other family members.

[Phoenix84]

Well, I don't have kids.

My parents moved the summer after I graduated from college.  So it was pretty much a non issue.  I was living with them during the move, and ended up getting a job and moving out a few months later.  I never really had a "room" but the room I slept in is now pretty much the guest room, which I stay in when I visit. 

I think they may still have some old stuff of mine, but not much.  So basically, they wasted no time in repurposing my stuff/space.

I took pretty much everything I wanted when I moved out to take my first job.  I have on occasion gone back and picked something up, like my snow pants or my old karate stuff.  But overall, I didn't leave much behind that I ended up needing.

I never had much in the way of posters or periphenalia.  I think my parents kept the bedding I used as a spare set.

One thing that really pissed me off though is they lost a TON of my old video games.  We're talking stuff from the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 era.  Those games are classics that you just can't find anymore.  I don't think they threw them away.  I suspect my sister stole them.

[whoisjohngalt]

My kids are still young, but my parents basically waited 5 seconds and whatever time it took them to find the furniture that they wanted.

My husband's room is still the same in his parents' house.  My husband is VERY sentimental about crap like that and it helps that his room is upstairs and my IL's can't make it there.  But even if they did, they wouldn't touch anything.

My IL's  didn't do anything with their daughter's room either and now she is back in that room with her husband and has been for the last 5-6 yrs.  And she'll probably stay there until IL's die bc they are leaving the house to her.

ETA:  knowing my DH, he probably wouldn't want to touch our kids' rooms either,  me - if I need the space - everything goes. 

[kittensaver]

We kept DN's room intact through college (so she could visit/crash any time she wanted) and up until she got married. I'm glad because they were living in another city and decided to "come home" to be married here. She spent the night before her wedding with us (with her dress hung in her room with all her childhood things ), and we were woken up in the early morning by a 20-something barging into our room, jumping on our bed (with us still asleep in it) and shouting excitedly, "I'm getting married today!" It was priceless

[happyhoix]

We left DS's room alone until he graduated college and had a good paying job, so we were pretty sure he wouldn't be back.

Then the tornado hit the house and gave us an excuse to clear out the upstairs closets (had to move everything downstairs so they could redo the drywall/roof/repaint/new flooring). It was a great opportunity to make DS go through his junk and pull out what he wanted to save vs what he wanted to donate. I consolidated everything he wanted to keep into boxes in our attic and DH turned his room into his mancave. There is a guest room upstairs, too, and that's where DS sleeps when he visits, so it's not like he doesn't have a bed when he comes to see us.

Short of having the tornado take the roof off the house, I'm not sure we could have gotten DS to sit down and go through all his junk, however. Probably would have eventually packed all of it into boxes and stored it.

We're planning to downsize the house when we retire in about 10 years, so probably we'll be stuck with DS's boxes of stuff in our attic until that point, but I don't mind them up there. Out of sight, out of mind.

Amusing side note, my big 6'3" engineer son wanted to keep all 50+ beanie babies he'd collected as a young boy. I thought that was very cute!

[sarcasticgirl]

I moved out at 18 and I'm 33 now. My mom still has a shelf hanging in my old room with some of my trophies and graduation cords etc. She hasn't repainted the walls yet- but she did hang a few family photos up and moved her sewing machine in. I'm the "baby" of the family and the only one that still has a bedroom left in the house. My parents renovated and turned the 5 BR house into a 3 BR house. My parents room, my old room and a workout room are all that survived. the other BRs got removed to expand general living spaces.