Some parents may mentally throw a party when their child goes off to college, while others may feel their home will be empty without the noise, mess and general frenzy that teenagers bring to a house and wish they were not going to college at all.
To decorate or not to decorate?
Many parents may believe that they need to keep their child’s bedroom the same and always available for when they return, while others may rub their hands together in glee at the thought of having a reclaimed space to play with. It may be best for parents to leave the room untouched for a little while, perhaps a few semesters, to see how often the child returns to the family home, and whether when they do, they need their own room to sleep in.
What to do with what is left behind
The child will not have been able to take all their stuff with them to college, so when it is time to redecorate, it goes without saying that there will be a fair amount of furniture and accessories that will need to be stored or repurposed. With the child’s permission, check through the room’s contents, throwing out anything that is broken, and give to charity anything, such as toys, that they have grown out of.
Different uses for the spare room
A vacated bedroom offers parents the chance to reclaim a bit of their home for themselves. Hobbies that were carried out in awkward places now have the chance to spread out. Wives who want their husbands out from under their feet can suggest that the child’s bedroom becomes a room solely for masculine use, perhaps being turned into a home cinema room complete with blackout drapes and a comfortable recliner chair; a home gym fitted out with wall-length mirrors and equipment, complemented by light, stimulating wall colors; or even a games room, with pinball machines and a football table.
A mother could have that arts and crafts room she always wanted, complete with a worktable and shelves or storage units full of beads, ribbons and other haberdashery. More prosaically, it could become a room where all the laundry is sorted and ironing could be carried out, rather than have it spilling over into the downstairs reception rooms. Of course, the room could serve both parents if it were transformed into a home study with computer desk and chair, a small select library with long and high bookcases, or even a meditation room with low lighting and minimalist decoration.
Remember they come back
It is a good idea that despite whatever type of room the space is turned into, it serves a dual purpose and can become a bedroom once again, however impromptu and impermanent it may be. An excellent way to achieve this is to have a sofa bed in the room, which will not only provide a place to sit during the day, but will turn into a bed on those occasions when the child returns home and needs a place to sleep.