The museum of childhood

"I have become custodian of my children's stuff"

Once the last child leaves the family home, parents tend to experience a sense of emptiness and a certain amount of nostalgia called “empty nest syndrome”. What now?

Downsizing might be on the horizon, but before you trade your four-bedroom for something cozier, there’s one big question: what do you do with all their stuff? Who gets to decide?

Now that the kids have moved out, life feels quieter, but also a little bittersweet. Their old rooms, once full of life and laughter, are now filled with remnants of their childhood. What’s next?

For years, your focus has been on raising your children, making sure they had everything they needed. Now, you're faced with boxes of belongings, memories packed into drawers, and the lingering question if these treasures are worth keeping, or if they are simply things they didn’t want to deal with themselves?

Should you preserve the space as it is for visits, or reclaim it for your own needs?

Remember that your children have only just left and their rooms may have become small replacements of these children being around. The challenge is to find the tipping point when a room starts turning from a sentimental foothold into a ‘museums of childhood’. Whenever that time comes, it’s important to move forward and make the necessary changes to live your life without being weighed down by your children’s possessions.

The transition doesn’t have to be rushed, but it should be intentional. Be sure to make a clear distinction between items that you need to remember pivotal moments and what is actually your child’s stuff to make decisions about.
When your children come home, use those visits as opportunities to ask: “Do you still need this?” That doesn’t mean ‘into storage at mom & dad’s’ but a requirement for the children to take those items away with them or to let them go for good. Not “should I store it for you?” but rather “Are you taking this with you, or letting it go?”

Don’t fall into the storage trap. Anything that goes there will come back to haunt you forever. It’s hard enough to go through storage items and decide to keep or ditch them if they are your own, but it’s near impossible to do so on behalf of someone else who might question your decisions later on.

Your children are now adults, and they should make decisions about their own belongings. The real challenge is finding the moment when sentiment turns into stagnation, when a space that was theirs becomes something you can reimagine for the next chapter of your life.