Your Children Leaving Isn’t an Ending – It’s Time to Reinvent What Your Home Will Be for Your Family in the Future

This is the time of year in which many parents are driving home from their college drop-offs to an empty house for the first time. Whether you have looked forward to this day for many years or dreaded it, lots of emotions come along with that day.

I dropped my middle child off to school this year, and my last is a senior in high school, so I can feel that time is rapidly approaching for my family as well. I used to love being alone in my house, a hot cup of tea, a good book, and the fireplace was my version of heaven on a Saturday afternoon if, by some miracle, everyone was out. But now, when I am home in the quiet, it feels very different; it's a foreshadowing of what's to come. The house feels so much bigger and emptier and maybe just a little too quiet.

I would say about 85% of clients who call me for my services have children who are in their 20s, with maybe one left in college, and they have just bought a second home. The kids have girlfriends or just got a dog, and maybe they even have a grandchild on the way. When I speak to them, they have so many hopes and dreams that this house will be the glue to unite their family. That they will have weekends and holidays with their children and significant others, and eventually with their grandchildren for those precious times they will come to visit. No pressure!

I talk to them about all the ways that we understand this time in life and how we have designed for family upon family that has been in this exact situation. That we understand the balance of what they are asking from the home and how it will deliver on this memory-making for them in every way possible. I assure them they have come to the right design firm because we know them maybe even a little better than they know themselves.

I have learned many lessons from working with so many empty nesters. I have learned that there is a delicate balance to be had during this time in life. Not to overreact. Not to make any rash decisions. We help to flesh out what the next 10 to 15 years may look like for their family. We have the harder conversations of ailing parents and what they may need in your home, conversations about aging in a home for themselves and what that may look like. Having a grandchild or a granddog visit and how the home should be designed with that in mind. We talk about designing an apartment within the larger home for them, with a place to sit and have breakfast together, and a separate laundry area near the primary bedroom. Maybe we are adding dishwasher drawers instead of a single-door one. Something that can be used easily when it's the two of them or expand when there’s a large group. When we are done, the house should feel cozy and inviting for the days they are alone in the home, and it should expand out and serve the whole family for holidays and weekends, but still provide respite for the owners to hide away with their book and a comfy chair near the fire.

For materials, we understand more than ever that these clients want a home that can be used by them for a group of friends or by their children with their own friends, using the house while they are not there. That every material will withstand beer bottles and cheeseburgers and chips spilling in the cracks of the sofa, and that when they return, everything will not only be in great shape but look more beautiful over the period of time it's been used. That the materials tell a story about the lives that were there and that they grow in their patina over time and that they have that wonderful lustre of a life lived in a home. Yes, this can be the case! You can sit back and pat yourself on the back for raising your children all those years and working so hard at your career at the same time. You know you can enjoy all the fruits of your labor with this home you are investing in, not just for yourselves but for your whole family. And that you can leave at the end of the weekend, turn the key, and head back home, not worrying about how it will fare over time.

So I leave you with my list I have created over the past 25 years of working with empty nesters, so that you can prepare yourself for what's to come or what may already be here:

1. Don’t automatically downsize – The first instinct is often this. But this may be the moment to just take a breath and ask: what do you really want from your home?
2. Design for the life you have now, but also think about what the next 10 years may look like. It will come in the blink of an eye.
3. Turn spare bedrooms into something meaningful. Don’t be afraid to take out that Queen bed and add a sleeper sofa. Add a sewing room, or the art studio you always wanted.
4. Create a really beautiful guest experience for the friends that will come. Call those old college friends and treat them to a beautiful weekend in your home. You will be drying your eyes very quickly and missing your children a lot less after one of these weekends. 'Oh yeah, we used to have so much fun together!'
5. Create a primary suite that feels like a destination – why? Because you, more than anyone, deserve it.
6. Create spaces for solitude for when you do want to get away on that busy weekend as the friends start to come again or family holidays.
7. And finally, remember, your children leaving your home doesn’t mean that something is ending; it means you get to reinvent, and this time it's all about what you want and what your home will be for in the future.

And if you are still struggling, call me and we can chat.

Interior designer Jess Cooney is one of Homes & Gardens' Editors-At-Large for By Design, where she shares her thoughts on decor. See the rest of her articles here.

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