![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/aaryn-belfer-768x1024-1.jpg.webp\")
Photo Credit: Aaryn Belfer<\/p>\nWhat the hell just happened?<\/p>\n
That was the question on loop in my head as I sat, nearly catatonic, watching my chickens scratch and crap, from a chair on my patio. It was the first Monday after dropping my one and only at college on the other side of the country. I was tired to the bone and in shock. Eighteen-plus years of permission slips, math homework, Barbie play (ugh), carpooling\u2014my God, the carpooling\u2014and a teenager who, for four years and counting, communicated almost exclusively through side-eye and not-so-under-the-breath clapbacks. Parenting is insanity, and when it stops, it feels so good and so bad all at once.<\/p>\n
Photo Credit: Aaryn Belfer<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t linger on my personal recovery here, except to say: Part of moving on is dealing with that empty room. What do we parents do with the utensil vortex, and more importantly, when do we do it?<\/p>\n
My daughter\u2019s room sat for two years like a forgotten museum exhibit<\/a>, preserved\u2014not because I was sentimental, but because my husband was. While he didn\u2019t want her to feel erased when she came home, I wanted to expunge her Totoro-meets-Pepto-Bismol gray-and-pink aesthetic, the sports jerseys, the inspirational stick-on decals from Etsy, the bazillion discarded beauty products that didn\u2019t make it into the blue duffel bags.<\/p>\n But with no will to fight, I focused on myself and let the shrine exist while I worked out some big feelings<\/a>.<\/p>\n My metamorphosis took a while, but I built a new, brilliantly free, empty-nest life. No more driving hundreds of miles a week, no more bleachers, no more ref whistles reverberating in my dreams. I reclaimed myself, then I hired a professional to help me reclaim my kid\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n EBSCO\u2019s Research Starters series says that \u201cempty nest syndrome\u201d is a real, if not clinical, diagnosis\u2014no chart line, no billing code. Just a recognized experience of grief, loneliness, and diminished purpose that can take up to a year to resolve.<\/p>\n Creating a Sanctuary<\/p>\n I turned to Treci Smith of Treci Smith Designs<\/a> because I loved what she did with her son\u2019s bedroom. (Full disclosure: She\u2019s a friend.) After several interrupted attempts at reimagining the room, she designed a den for her husband, Amir. The couple, married 32 years, raised four kids in their four-bedroom ranch home in Bonita, and over the years, the kids switched rooms and pairings countless times.<\/p>\n The house Tetris continued as each child went off to college. But when their youngest left, his bedroom atrophied. It became a haphazard office and, for one stubborn stretch, nothing at all. A purgatory.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to utilize every room in our house,\u201d Smith says, \u201cnot letting it be a room that just sits empty.\u201d She finally made a plan to evict purgatory, but the pandemic hit, and all four kids moved back home. It took a while longer before the room was finally hers to play with. <\/p>\n What Smith created in its place is magic. It feels like a speakeasy<\/a>. Dark, moody, and deliberately masculine, the den looks like how sandalwood and musk would smell if they took physical form. It\u2019s got a bar cart, Amir\u2019s cigars, a speaker, a desk for his real estate research, and French doors that open to a courtyard and pool.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think of meditation, we think of light and airy,\u201d Smith says, rejecting that there\u2019s only one way to create calm. \u201cIt\u2019s a sanctuary. It\u2019s a place where the rest of the world doesn\u2019t really feel like it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith doesn\u2019t talk about trends. \u201cI think everything has to have a purpose, and not just to be magazine-ready,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I ask clients, \u2018How do you want to feel in this space?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For my project, Smith isn\u2019t interested in erasing the past so much as spotlighting it. As she guides me in reimagining my kid\u2019s former room, she\u2019s pushing back on my urge to wipe the kid out of it entirely. \u201cI don\u2019t want her to feel like she\u2019s been pushed out of the house, essentially,\u201d she says. \u201cThe room is now functioning for other purposes, but it\u2019s still hers.\u201d<\/p>\n She pulls a painting of my daughter off the wall in another part of the house for use in the new space. She also caught sight of a planed section of a pantry door from our last house, which has my daughter\u2019s height marks in my handwriting, climbing as she grew. \u201cGrab that,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt has to go in.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not just decoration. It\u2019s continuity.<\/p>\n From Playroom to Paycheck<\/p>\n For years, the biggest room in Melissa Gaviria\u2019s Rancho Pe\u00f1asquitos house was a shared bedroom and playroom for her two kids\u2014absorbing blocks, toys, and balls that, with impressive consistency, never made it into the ball pit. As the kids grew, the room saw less use, then emptied out entirely: Her older child moved out, her younger one moved upstairs. <\/p>\n Gaviria tried turning it into an office, but \u201cthat was just one little corner of a whole big room,\u201d she says. When a coworker converted part of a house into an Airbnb-ready ADU, Gaviria was inspired. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DS_5372-1024x683.jpeg\")
Courtesy of Treci Smith<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/treci-smith-683x1024.jpeg.webp\")
Courtesy of Treci Smith<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/267A0774-683x1024.jpg.webp\")
Photo Credit: Hali Makanah<\/p>\n