Your daughter moved out in 2019. To Cork for college, then to a flat with friends, then to her boyfriend's place, then to her own apartment in 2023. Her bedroom in your Drumcondra house has been quietly furnished and quietly empty for 6 years now. You change the sheets every few months "in case she comes back for a weekend." She doesn't, often. The radiator on that side of the house heats a room nobody sleeps in. The carpet doesn't wear. The view from the window goes mostly unseen.
That bedroom, listed on Packhood as storage from 2020 to today, would have earned you approximately €5,100 gross / €3,000 net. That's not a hypothetical — your friend Maeve down the road did exactly that with her son's old bedroom and is currently planning a kitchen renovation off the back of it.
This is the empty-nester story most Irish parents haven't run the numbers on. Here it is.
The "she might come back" room
Almost every Irish parent of a 25-35 year old has one. The bedroom that's still set up exactly as it was the day the child left. Trophies on the shelves. A few clothes in the wardrobe "in case." Photos on the walls from 2014. The duvet cover she bought in IKEA in second year.
The room is preserved out of love. That's real and important. But it's also costing you money — quietly, persistently, every year. €70-€110/mo of forgone Packhood storage rent (Irish suburban semi spare-room median). Compounded over 5-7 years of empty nest, that's €4,000-€9,000 of forgone income.
The trade is straightforward: clear the room, store her actual childhood things in clearly-labelled boxes in a corner of the attic or garage, list the room on Packhood as a clean lockable storage space. She doesn't lose anything; you both gain a financial cushion.
How to have the conversation with your adult child
The mistake most parents make is announcing this as a fait accompli or apologising for it. Neither works. The conversation that lands well is honest and brief: "We're going to clear your room and rent it out for storage. Your stuff that we want to keep is going in three labelled boxes in the attic. Take whatever you want next time you're home."
Most adult children, asked directly, are mildly confused that the room is still set up. They've already moved on emotionally; they'd just never asked about it. Many will be apologetic that the room was kept frozen for so long. None we've ever heard of have been upset about the parental decision to let the room go productive.
If you have multiple adult children, do it for all the bedrooms at once. Don't make one feel singled out. The conversation is "we're moving on with the house" — not "we're moving on with you."
What to actually do with the kids' stuff
Three labelled boxes per child: "Sentimental" (school awards, drawings, baby teeth, a few of their best childhood photos), "Practical" (the things they specifically asked you to hold for them — a winter coat, a guitar, a few books), "Photos / albums". Three boxes is firm. Anything that won't fit in three boxes, your child should take with them. Most won't want it.
Furniture: the bed and wardrobe stay (storage renters don't typically need them, and they're easier to leave than to sell). Mattress can be wrapped in plastic. Wardrobe gets a small lock if you're careful.
Photos on walls / personal items: down. Take a photo of the wall as it was first, then box it all. The room becomes a "neutral storage space" rather than "your daughter's old bedroom" — which is what it needs to be for renters to feel comfortable using it.
The math, with Maeve's example
Maeve in Drumcondra cleared her son's old room (he moved to Sydney in 2018, not coming back any time soon) in early 2024. Listed at €95/mo as "Spare room — locked, indoor, dry, ground floor." Booked in 19 days to a returning emigrant family. They stayed 14 months. Followed by a small Etsy seller who's been in 8 months. Total gross: €2,090, net ~€1,250.
Maeve's planned use: contributing to the kitchen renovation she and her husband have been quietly saving for since 2017. Without the storage income they'd be 4 years from breaking ground; with it they're starting work this autumn.
The empty bedroom went from "the heating bill we don't quite acknowledge" to "the kitchen we'd been pushing off." Same room, different framing, real outcome.
The emotional bonus most empty-nesters don't expect
Several Irish empty-nester hosts have described this in chat: turning the kid's old room into a cleanly-listed storage space is unexpectedly emotionally settling. The room stops being a frozen monument to a phase of life that's over. It becomes a quiet, neutral, working part of the house. Some describe it as "letting the house breathe."
The grief of an empty nest is real but it's also enabling — your kids built lives elsewhere, which is the whole point of raising them. Letting the bedroom be a productive space instead of a museum is, for many parents, a small piece of the moving-on process. The income is the practical bonus.
List the room
List the spare bedroom on Packhood. Three labelled boxes for the sentimental items. A clean wide photo of the empty floor. Three sentences in the description. The first booking will land within 3 weeks.
The income is real. The emotional shift is unexpectedly real too. The room can finally do something for the household that built it.