I will say one thing that made me happy yesterday-- going into her room, and bathroom, and cleaning the hell out of all of it. She left in a whirlwind and only mildly sorted through her gear, just trying to figure out what few things were important enough to take with her. But she's also sort of a slob anyway. So it was extremely satisfying going in, sorting though everything, washing all the bedding which who knows how long that's been, washing all the clothes thrown on the floor, sorting it all, and putting it away in her dresser and closet. Throwing away gobs of crumpled old papers at the bottom of her half-dozen bags and backpacks strewn about the floor. And the bathroom... wow, so gross. Just about using straight bleach was the only way to manage it.
It's all really nice now, should be a relief for her when she comes home. I'm probably fixating on it because it's one small way I can still help her out, even if she doesn't know and almost certainly won't appreciate it that much when she does come home! 
I can't identify with what you and brad are going through, though I wish I could. One thing I do understand here is the cleaning her rooms part. As soon as my youngest stepson has saved however much he thinks it is he needs to put on a down-payment for a house and vacates the premises, there is going to be a major reckoning in that part of the house. Not even a massive cleaning. The back bedroom which he's turned into his living room is getting a re-model. Undecided on whether his bedroom will be remodeled, but that back bedroom......yeesh. "Slob" is no longer the word for it. That space has been used and misused for so long, without the proper cleaning and upkeep that should accompany it, that it just needs to be nuked from orbit at this point. Also, the carpet never recovered from him and his brother's adolescence when they were building god knows what back there and experimenting in god knows how kind of ways. It didn't get better in this one's college years, where he took over the room when his brother left.....his adult hobbies include painting (he's quite good), but he's not exactly careful with his paints, far as I can tell. The bathroom will just get a severe cleaning. The bedrooms......well, I've been saving for this, and we're gonna drop some $ on it.
On another topic, something
@Gigem said is very true, I think, though I hadn't consciously thought of it before. I think I'm stuck, mentally, at a younger age than I really am. I know that happen to everybody to some degree, we all forget a little bit how old we are and then when we think of our real age, there's that "Wait....really?" moment. But since I never had kids, I think it probably happens with me more than usual. It's easy to float along, thinking you're the same person you've always been, because in many ways you are, when there's no children marking the passing of time more visibly, in a way you can't ignore. It's easier to ignore age and think I'm the same guy I was back when I joined the board. Then sometimes when I think about how old I actually am, it hits like a palette of bricks. "Wait, I'm how old?" Realizing that thinking about and planning for retirement is an imminent thing that will actually happen, as opposed to hypothetical, theoretical chatter on threads, makes me wonder where the time went. Supposedly, people with children live fuller lives, literally. The time feels fuller, more packed, it passes with more sense of it. As opposed to folks without children, who have more of a "where did the time go?" feeling. I don't think about it much, and it doesn't seem like it, but when I stop to think how close to 50 I am, I think.....that can't be right. But it is.
