Our house is crammed to bursting since the twentysomethings came home. I can’t walk from one room to another without tripping over clutter that the older three have acquired in their time away. And there’s Zac, the teenager, with all his mess. Shoes overspill the shoe rack, coat hooks are in danger of breaking under the strain.
The kitchen has become a bike park, the sitting-room a weightlifting zone. And thanks to the girls, the rest of the house looks like a jumble sale. They have a thing for vintage clothes and I have come to dread their return from shopping trips, bulging plastic bags sagging from their fingers.
Our home is filled with that particular charity-shop whiff: the smell of moth balls and dusty fabric, with a hint of mould. I have told them that when you buy something new, you have to get rid of something old. The girls are resistant.
I manage to ignore the state of their bedrooms, but when their clothes spill into other rooms, snagging feet and causing a hazard near the top of the stairs, I demand that they return some of this stuff to the nearest charity outlet, even though I know they will probably come back with different things.
The most coveted items are original 80s clothes, the 80s being back in style. At least in my house. It is bizarre to see my daughters wearing outfits I wore in my youth: high-waisted trousers, pale jeans, huge striped T-shirts and loud shirts.
“I think I had one exactly like that,” I tell Megan, when she appears in a baggy, patterned shirt.
“Really?”
“The 80s was my era,” I say, examining the faded label. “Wouldn’t it be weird if it was mine?”
Megan glances down at herself doubtfully.
“Have you kept any clothes from then,” Lily asks.
“God, no.”
They are surprised by my laughter. I explain that the 80s was a lifetime away, I didn’t actually like the fashion and, besides, since then I’ve moved house about a hundred times. I point out that each time I moved, I had to cull my possessions. “It’s cleansing,” I tell them. “Clutter has to go.”
The girls look horrified. Not being kids of the 80s, they have a completely different experience of life. They have never paid utility bills, defrosted a fridge or moved into their own flat (spending the household budget on a gold, strapless dress and existing on cornflakes); they have stayed in a comfortable house, run and paid for by their parents.
My worry is that they are missing out on life lessons that will help them grow into fully formed adults. They are not alone in this. “Adulting” is a new term buzzing on social media, used to describe twentysomethings behaving like adults by cooking dinner or changing sheets. There are T-shirts that proclaim, “I’m not adulting today,” as if it is a choice, and living with parents an excuse for a Peter Pan-like opt out.
It is not their fault that financial necessity has forced many young people to stay at home. But even if parents demand rent and the kids do their own washing and cooking, the experience doesn’t come close to the realities of struggling alone in a seedy flat.For most people of my generation, moving out was a natural rite of passage. But I was able to rent in London when I was 19 before buying a flat, financed by my first salary. My children, born in a very different time, have no such hope. They are stuck in the parental home, unable to move on or become real adults. I have a sense of regret for them, and a flash of anxiety about their futures, about their ability to cope when they eventually make it out of the nest. I am grateful for my long list of past addresses. I’m even grateful that I wore those awful 80s clothes the first time around.
Names have been changed
• Saskia Sarginson is the author of The Stranger (Piatkus, £7.99).
