The life of a parent often entails making compromises for the sake of the family’s overall health and happiness. This applies to all aspects of life, which means that parents are selfless a lot of the time for their children.
Everything changes when the kids move out. Empty nesters may have times when they miss the chaos of family life, but they also have more free time to pursue other activities and interests.
Here are some ideas in how empty nesters can fill their new free time.
Create A Better Home
One issue of a family is accommodating everyone. With many different needs and larger demands on everything from the bathroom in the morning to storage space in the garden shed, sometimes it seems that it would be better to live in a warehouse.
Now that the kids are out making homes for themselves, parents can create a home that suits their tastes and needs. Empty bedrooms can be refurbished into exercise studios, media rooms, libraries, or crafts studios. The transformed space can be cleaner and more organized, too, since there are fewer people to muck it up.
Those who can’t bear to live in the same house can choose the option of building their dream home in a new space. Liberated parents can buy plots of land for sale in developments like Donnybrook, outside Melbourne, and enjoy a quieter life within easy reach of the big city.
Go On A Trip Or Two
Becoming an empty nester means that their income goes further since the monthly household expenses reduce. With the extra cash and greater free time, the parents can become more adventurous. A good example is taking more trips.
While family trips are fun, they can get expensive, especially with a larger household. Now there are only two people to cover, it’s easier and cheaper to plan for vacations and the options are greater. You can consider a new car; it will be easier to handle than the six-seater you drove around with everyone arguing over the music system and requesting frequent toilet stops. Or you can upgrade to business class when flying abroad so that you don’t feel like you’ve spent the last few hours playing sardines.
Explore Yourself
Parents have dedicated their time into raising their kids to turn out alright. As such, they may not have had the chance to explore themselves further while the children were growing up.
With time on their side, empty nesters can explore parts of themselves that took a backseat during parenthood. Without parental duties, empty nesters have time to re-enter the world of work by starting a new career or picking up on a previous profession. They may decide to start a new hobby, return to study or simply read more.
Life as an empty nester is full of opportunities that were drowned out by parental commitments. Their children will stay in touch and continue the family relationship, and maybe expand the brood. Some day the empty nesters may become grandparents, and then they’ll be in a position of giving advice without taking the stress.
