Whatever happened to "empty nest"?

[jhetley]

I was just wandering around downstairs, waiting for the second cup of coffee to trickle down through grounds and filter into usefulness.  And contemplating the serried ranks of boxes left here by both Elder and Younger Sons.  Upstairs, downstairs, in milady's chamber.

Wonder when (or if) that stuff will be summoned to its destiny . . .

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Number One Son spent nearly three years in New York and all the Stuff he'd accumulated in three years at Cambridge ad a year in London came home for the duration - including six large architectural models. His room was revamped, shelved out and turned into a half store/half bedroom. Just about big enough to get visitors in if they didn't mind the shelves.

He came home in June intending to stay for the summer prior to going to Rome (he's at the British School on an architectural scholarship until June 09) and proceeded to 'sort' through his junk. Predictably there was stuff he should never have kept and he started to sling it out and pack what was left. He actually made the bedroom quite comfortable again with shelves limited to the wallspace not banked on the floorspace.

Just as predictably an architect friend offered him a couple of months work on a competition project - in London - so he buggered off leaving half the contents of his room exploded across the landing.

With only a couple of days at home before leaving (early) for Rome the stuff on the landing is now in big plastic boxes - but still on the landing and waiting for some strong person to heave it down into the store room with the rest of his Stuff.

Number One Daughter? She's been away a little longer and is a little more settled, but we still have a desk, shelves, drawers and assorted boxes that won't fit in to the new flat.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Our boys come by this trait honestly -- Wife's SCUBA gear hung around in her parent's attic until they sold the house and moved . . . pressure-test on the tank had expired a decade or two back. Me, I threw out stuff I'd left stored 40 years past, when cleaning out Mom's house.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

This is true. I can't claim innocence in this matter either... but I married and had my own house at twenty, so retrievig Stuff from parents was easy to do because we had somewhere to put it.

If I had to move now, the Stuff mountain would be almost impossible to cope with.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"Stuff" remains one of the largest obstacles to our relocating into something smaller, easier to heat, and with a condo association in charge of mowing and snow removal in alternate seasons.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

We've all spent a lifetime collecting Stuff and - yes - if we had to walk away from it, we probably could, but it comforts us and says: this is who I am. This is what I've done.

When we move home, the bricks and mortar don't matter as much as the familiar Stuff. This is the third house I've lived in since we got married and after both house moves I thought I'd feel some emotional tug whenever I passed the old place. But as soon as the Stuff was transferred I felt little or no connection. Once someone else's Stuff was in it - it became someone else's home.

Home is where the Stuff is.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

In our case, it's several lifetimes collecting Stuff -- some ancestral Stuff runs back to Great-great-several-more-times-great Grandmother Boehm, who spun and loomed that flax back in Alsace in 1789 . . .

(That part isn't hard, it folds up neatly in a chest. It's the chest itself that's the problem.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic.

I do have the grandfather clock that was bought by my great-great grandfather for my great-grandparents on the occasion of their wedding in 1883. It's pretty fragile, now, having been in my Aunt Mary's and (her daughter) my spinster Aunt Bessie's none too tender care until that line of the family died out. I've had it since the mid 1990s and if I had the money I'd get it restored properly - but I haven't. It's probably worth quite a bit - or would be if restored. I'm not sure about its value in it's present condition.

That's the only heirloom, though, unless you count a few old photos and the two antique mismatched chairs my Grandpa George bought in junk shops in the 1950s.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

We have more ancestral Stuff than we know what to do with. Most of the furniture Stuff gets employed storing smaller Stuff.

And my sister has her half of the Stuff, with no heirs . . .

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'd guess about the same time my daughters get their stuff out of my family room.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

All of mine, so far, have come home from college -- either on vacation, or after graduation, or en route from one stage in their education to another -- and unpacked their gear in the living room prior to carrying it back upstairs to their rooms. Only they never do carry it back upstairs.

The Elder Daughter is gone, graduated, and married, and there are still boxes of her stuff hanging around . . . stuff that I don't dare throw out, because the day that I do will be the day that I get an urgent phone call from her demanding that I expressmail to her the contents of that cardboard box in the corner of the living room by the piano . . . "What do you mean, mother, 'you threw it out'?!?"

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

The only articles I have left at my parent's place are things from my childhood that I left behind and they never threw out. Toys and clothes mostly. Ugh.

I've done a couple serious cullings in recent years. And it's about time for another.....

[xengar.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of the stuff I've left there is in the form of books. Once I've got room for a bookshelf of sufficient size, you won't have to trip over my boxes any more. Technically, I've got the space right now, but the layout of this apartment doesn't cooperate.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Hey, I knew you both read this. Just throwing out some bait . . .

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I should get my kids to read my LJ.

Oh... maybe not...

Ooops!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I never made any move to drag them in. It just happened.