Kids have flown the nest: Time to declutter your home?

Kids have flown the nest: Time to declutter your home?

Prepare Yourself! 

It is likely that the room is going to be a bit of a mess. Probably left littered with items such as books, clothes, photographs, ornaments and fluffy toys. After such an emotional upheaval you are likely to feel burdened with the belongings left behind. What you need is some quick ways to declutter your home.

What Action should you Take?

There are a number of actions that you can take, depending on the level of the reaction you can take.

Leave it as it is

This will depend on how often it is that your child will be returning home. This could be more often than you think in the midst of a boomerang generation. Shutting the door and pretending it is not there may not work for long, though. The urge to implement some household storage solutions could become too great. This is probably the reaction that your child is expecting.

Put everything into Storage

Once your children have left home it is perfectly natural to want to reclaim the space for your own use. It is your house after all. So, box everything up and head to your nearest self-storage facility. Obviously, there is a cost involved, but self-storage services for students offer very competitive quotes and often have special offers running. This is a great household storage solution to declutter FAST. The contents of your self storage unit will delight your future grandchildren too. Image what they might find in their very own Aladin’s cave.

Sell, Recycle or Ditch?

As a parent, you are likely to have quite a good idea of the items that are important to your children. So you could opt to sort through the left belongings and reserve the precious items. Any other items can be either sold, sent to local charities or even thrown away. If items have been left behind it communicates that they are unimportant. However, it really does depend on how brave a parent you are when deciding what action to take.

Deliver a Deadline

If you feel that you can’t, or are unhappy to deal with your children’s belonging.  The perfect solution would be to give them a deadline to sort their own belonging before you dispose of them yourself. This can be frustrating if you are waiting to use the space in the home for something else. However, this is probably the easiest way to avoid any conflict.

The course of action that you choose to take is, of course, going to be determined by the circumstances in which your child has left home. For example, if they have left for university, or perhaps to join the armed forces, you may be a little more lenient regarding their left behind belongings. However, a stronger course of action is probably required if they have left to start a life with someone new, or in a foreign country for example.

Re-Purpose Precious Space

Remember, though, that if you harbour these belongings you could be wasting precious space in your home. You could also be preventing your child from “completely” leaving home. All the time a substantial amount of their belongings remain at home part of them still lives there, which prevents them from fully moving on. This is the same for you too.

Whether your children have flown the nest to head off to university, move in with friends, or to start their own family it can be difficult to deal with. Once the initial shock of empty nest syndrome has passed, it’s time to venture into the bedrooms that have been left behind.

So, make a list of household storage hacks and put them into action. Perhaps you have already gone through this process. Which action did you take? Let us know in the comments.

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