Downsizing As Empty Nesters: Selling the House Where We Raised Our Family

My 20-year-old daughter recently asked how I would feel if her next tattoo was “10920” in Roman numerals. Aside from my general feeling when she adds another tattoo (that’s a later blog post), I was hit with mixed emotions — touched by the gesture but also feeling the familiar ache of mom guilt and reflecting on what we went through downsizing as empty nesters.

Those numbers are the address of the house we sold last year after 25 years. All but the oldest of my four kids lived nowhere else but that house, coming home there as newborns and moving out for college. 

Every family milestone you can think of happened within the walls of that modest yellow-brick, three-bedroom split level. There were the ordinary-but-extraordinary things — first steps, first teeth, first day of school, shooting hoops in the yard, learning to ride a bike, learning to drive a car, prom pictures and graduations. And there were the milestones that changed life forever – positive pregnancy tests, grieving the losses of people we love, locking down during the pandemic, figuring out life after job losses, walking our kids through choosing a college. The list is literally endless.  

The Emotional Journey of Downsizing as Empty Nesters

Good Luck, Jacqui

If you have a kid around 20-25 years old, I can guess what popped in your head reading this: THAT episode of “Good Luck Charlie,” the Disney Channel show that was a staple of Sunday nights in the 2010s. In “Make Room for Baby,” the Duncan family decides to move to a bigger home, and mom Amy goes back inside their old house for one last look after it’s empty. 

Amy is immediately swept up in all the memories that happened there – and changes her mind about moving. I bawled during that montage because it was exactly what I was seeing in my mind every time we got serious about selling.

But, alas, the time came to really do it. Our youngest was starting her second year of college and it finally felt like the right time. We had been talking about moving pretty much since we became a family of six in a house that was built for a family of four. But it was never quite the right moment until then. 

My husband’s unexpected unemployment turned out to be the jump-start we needed because it gave him time to start clearing out 25 years of STUFF.  After three days of emptying the crawl space and garage, we rented a dumpster to haul away the junk. It was filled within a half hour – brimming with broken toys, old baby gear, dusty sports trophies, and so many more long-forgotten items that were once necessities. 

Sorting the Memories from the Mess

The Difficulty of Downsizing: What to Keep, What to Toss

That right there is the absolute hardest part of downsizing. What do you throw away when every single thing holds a memory? Everywhere I looked, there was something that made us laugh or tear up: my son’s first-grade paper, where he answered “When I’m at school, my mom ___” with “plays Nintendo;” my daughter’s hand-drawn book about “Little Bunny’s Edwingers” (she meant “Adventures,” which we still tease her about to this day); spelling tests, history tests, good citizenship certificates, spelling bee ribbons and about a million art projects. 

Not to mention the stuff from my and my husband’s childhoods – my kindergarten report card and high school jacket, Bob’s childhood baseball collection. Then there were the pictures – piles and piles of pictures. Considering my youngest was 2 when the first iPhone came out, the vast majority of our photos are printed and not digital, and I lack the crafty gene to have sorted them into albums. 

Tips for Downsizing as Empty Nesters: How to Navigate the Process

Where to Begin?

The crawl space and garage were just two of the many places we had to clear out before we could put up the For Sale sign – every closet, every drawer, every storage bin had something that needed to be evaluated for Keep, Donate or Garbage. A few things that helped pare down the piles:

1. Have the least sentimental person take the lead. Bob is definitely less sentimental than me and he also was the one who happened to have the most time. So he tackled the memory-type stuff while I did the kitchen, closets, etc. However, I did reserve the right to look through the piles before things were tossed out, with a promise I would only rescue things that were critical.  For the most part, I stuck to that, although a random spelling test or two might have found its way into my “Keep” pile. 
2. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you haven’t used a gadget in the kitchen or worn a sweater in your closet or opened the Bath & Body Works gift set you got for Christmas three years ago, that means YOU DON’T WANT IT. Get rid of it. Don’t spend the time moving it. 
3. Donate respectfully. If it’s junk to you, it’s probably junk to someone else. Only donate what you would give to a friend if they needed it. I know it hurts to throw stuff in the garbage but it’s still better than giving out-of-date clothes or broken toys to a resale shop or a shelter. 
4. Don’t go too far the other way. More than once, I have needed something in our new place that I got rid of in my zealous pre-move cleaning. You might not use that lemon zester often, but are you never going to use it again? It’s OK to keep a few things that aren’t in your everyday rotation.
5. Embrace the reset. In the year since we moved, I have cut way down on my consumption of stuff. I was planning on a “No Buy 2025,” but that didn’t pair well with my late-night Amazon scrolling. Still, I think twice before hitting the order button after seeing the sheer volume of what we got rid of and knowing how much less space we have. 

Saying Good-Bye to the Family Home and Moving On

Finally the day came last May for us to say good-bye to our house and move into a two-bedroom condo rental. And that’s my best piece of advice: Take your time to say good-bye. 

The night before the move, it worked out perfectly that I was home alone. I took a drive past all my kids’ childhood schools, then went by the house where I grew up and my mom lived until she passed away. I came home and walked through every empty room, letting myself absorb all the memories in those walls. I sat on the top step and cried, with my own “Good Luck Charlie” montage going through my head, knowing in less than 24 hours these would no longer be our walls, our stairs, our floors. 

Saying good-bye that night allowed me to be ready for moving day and everything that came after, even helping the kids through their feelings about it. I try hard not to put the positive spin on it when they bring up missing our old house. I remind myself it was the only house they knew and to them it’s still “home.” If my daughter wants a tattoo of it, that’s absolutely her right. 

A year later, I still believe it was exactly the right time for us to sell. We’re all starting new chapters, even Bob and I as empty-nesters. And deep down we all know that a house is just bricks and mortar. It’s our family and friends and our memories that make it a home – and wherever we go, that’s never going to change.