Our house is, in the immortal words of Bjork "Oh, so quiet".
Our son, a fully grown adult, has gone on his first ever holiday without the parental units. That means we are alone in the house with the cats. It's strange, we miss him of course, but there is a weird feeling of freedom in the house. For hubby this manifests in him wandering around naked a great deal of the time so surprise visitors are likely to get a lot more than they bargained for.
We can eat anything we like without having to hide the onion or pretend that things are something other than what they are. In our house normally we do things like have salmon casserole and pretend that it's tuna because the child thinks he doesn't like tinned salmon. We have lamb casserole but not Irish Stew (yes, it's the same thing).
Somehow we incorporate his chores into our daily routine and get them done quicker and dare I say, better, than is normally the case. The child, you see, is the king of procrastination. He loves nothing more than putting things off in the hope that the magic of the house will do the job for him. Many years ago, I thought I had found a solution in the form of a small book called "Eat the green frog". The lesson of the book is to choose the task you least want to do each day and do it first, everything from there on will be more pleasant or easier. It didn't work for the King but I've used it to motivate me to do the tasks I would rather put off.
It's terrible but aside from the quiet, the thing we notice most is the huge reduction in the food bills. As a side note and to help illustrate this point, "the boys" (our son and his cousin who are travelling together) had the best day of their lives on the day they flew out. Super early flight meant they had breakfast at Tullamarine, flew to Perth, breakfast number 2, then lunch and then dinner. Four main meals in a day, best day ever!
As a joke, over the past few years as we approach the child's Birthday or Christmas we ask if he wants furniture as a gift for his own home and he advises us that he is not planning on going anywhere. This is fast becoming the norm I feel, where adult children will continue to reside within the family home because it is just too prohibitive to enter the real estate market on their own, I actually like the idea of multi generational living especially as parents age and need a little support while having their independence, but I have to admit that I am enjoying the complete freedom of the temporary empty nest.