This Reimagined Empty Nest Is Still Full of Love

Celebrating a book launch with a free organization worksheet for all readers.

Over a year ago, I had an idea to pull together numerous voices to share their experiences as empty nesters. I knew that if I published a book based on only my experience, it would be lopsided.

Some of us flipped their bedrooms into sewing spaces or home gyms the day after our adult children officially moved out. Shoot! Some were slapping up paint and installing new flooring before they returned for the last load of boxes.

Others of us haven’t been able to bear to move a single one of their medals and mementos from high school—even a decade after they changed addresses to their own mortgaged dwellings. Their track shoes and letter jackets are still in the closet. And the drawers contain shorts they will definitely not fit into anymore.

I’m somewhere in the middle of those two. There isn’t a wrong way to be an empty-nest parent. There is only the path you choose.

This week, I celebrate with the 21 authors who rose to the challenge and shared their stories with wisdom, humor, vulnerable hearts, and hope-filled messages.

I have SO appreciated hearing each story and have been blessed that these writers chose to give a voice to what we can hardly speak out loud sometimes.

I wanted to share one of the resources with you that is a launch party gift. Even if you aren’t a parent or an empty nester, you might enjoy this worksheet to help you begin purging and organizing your home.

The last ten years have looked like this in our empty nest:

• We did convert their rooms and took them over for new uses.

• We’ve been purging a lot of stuff. I don’t want them to have to deal with it all someday when we’re gone. And we asked them recently to kindly remove the last of their treasures from our closets and storage spaces.

• Our children are always welcome in our home. Their castoff shoes, furniture, and old books are not.

• We went through the storage areas once. Now we’re on round two of purging our possessions. We haven’t moved in 18 years, so, yeah—stuff!

My children are part of my heart, and their stuff is not what endears them to me. Their rooms were not sacred spaces when they had their own homes to fill up. My husband and I live here, so we have made this our space again, and we share it with them—and their pack-n-pays, diaper bags, booster seats, pillows, totes of games—whenever they visit.

Are you an empty nester?

If you need permission to reclaim your space and reimagine it again, this is is that permission. It won’t change how much you love the kids.