To not understand how people have an evening.

We have a 4 year old and still have evenings together. Bath time is 7-7:30, then one of us reads stories for half an hour while the other does the kind of chores you mention. We leave DS in bed listening to his Yoto and usually spend 8-10ish watching TV or chatting before I go to bed. DH often stays up another hour or so to play video games.

All the chores you mention are either done by the person not reading stories, or done alongside other chores at other times of the day. Dishwasher is unloaded during breakfast or while cooking dinner. Lunches are packed while cooking dinner. Laundry takes 5 minutes to put on when you get home, and can be hung to dry just before bed.

We usually have an evening of at least an hour tv watching . Eat dinner, put dishes in dishwasher ( kids help) and a few to soak
overnight. Laundry is daytime, empty dishwasher ( kids) / finish washing up in the morning . I don’t prep lunches - I buy a sandwich , DH eats at lunchtime at home and kids have school dinners.

I don't have a dishwasher or a robot hoover so maybe that's it 😅

How can that take all evening?!

DD is 6 and I work full time.

I emptied the dishwasher and made
my lunch (DD has school lunch) for tomorrow whilst cooking dinner. Refilled dishwasher after dinner and tidied kitchen. Hung a load of washing on airer. Did DD’s reading and got her ready for bed and did the cat litter trays and sorted a pile of toys for charity shop by 8pm.

8pm- now I’ve had a shower and been on my laptop/watching TV and binging peanuts and chocolate.

Are you making life too complicated? Week night dinners in this house are 30 mins max to prep and cook. Lunch takes me less than 5.

I do wonder about this. Do people not habit stack? I was out the house for work 8:30am-10pm tonight so I honestly do understand the lack of time. But for example, I might bring a basket of washing down the stairs with me when I come down in the morning. Put the washing on while the kettle is boiling. Done.

Do people mean ‘put the washing on’ to involve more steps eg sorting what to put in the wash? I don’t separate anything, and if I have to (eg pure wool items), they get separated when they come off my body so I don’t ever have to rummage around the wash basket.

Scrape plate and put into dishwasher when finished eating from it - employ a ‘touch it once’ policy. If you had time to eat off it then it’s about 4 more seconds to then put it in the washing machine.

Trying to think what other chores there are really…. Get a robot hoover (or 2! We have one upstairs and downstairs)! We have to do the stairs maybe once a week.

If both of you work outside the home full time then I easily understand this.

a PP says she doesn’t get it but then says she finishes at 5 and her DH at 4! These are not usual finish times IME.

If you’re working, not home till 6.30 say and if your kids require a lot of nagging/emotional input at bedtime (mine do despite being 10 and 13!) then I totally get it.

Kids make their own lunches
Dishwasher goes on overnight and one of the kids unloads it in the morning
Laundry is quite quick to put on or switch from washer to dryer and kids put their own away.

We're usually done with chores by 9 and go to bed 11-12.

Do you both work out of the home? If so you obviously do have have to fit things in in the evening but it sounds like you're doing too much and need to streamline your processes a bit, or lower your standards! I'm a chaotic person and struggle with chores and routines but basically accept that I'll get the minimum done during the week while we're working and we catch up at weekends.

When I started working full time, I identified that there were 3 big household jobs that needed doing every day: making dinner; emptying dishwasher, taking laundry out of machine and putting on airer. At that time we had a teenager, so we had a rota for those 3 jobs, for me, H, and the teen.

All the other things like putting the washing on, I saw as a quickie I could handle in bits e.g. put some things in laundry basket while I’m getting ready for bed, or getting up in morning, carry downstairs next time I go, put machine on while waiting for kettle to boil etc.

I just refused to do packed lunches: couldn’t be arsed.

A lot of people saying they are done by 7. We’re not even home from work by 7 if in the office (which might be everyday soon 😩). DC has a club one day that runs until 8 and another until 9. Inevitably hungry after both even though they had dinner pre clubs. That’s two days out before trying and they are the non office days so the rest of the week I’m not even starting cooking dinner until 7:20 at the earliest.

I will say though we try to avoid washing cloth a during the week. Dishwasher goes on over night. Most of the evening is spent cajoling DC to read, get clothes out, brush teeth etc and as much as you can watch something around that, it’s not great when you have to pause every 10 minutes or so to nag them. DC is one of those kids that goes up to do something and get distracted…

We have a rule that no work happens after 9pm on a weeknight. We have time to relax, watch a couple of shows and be in bed for 11pm.

Also, I definitely don’t unload the dishwasher on the same night. I do it the next day just before I put it on again.

I would stop doing all the housework in the evening.

I tidy downstairs quickly, stick the washing in the machine & put the dishwasher on once and then call it a day. I don’t do any housework past 6/7pm. My house does look like shit though, so maybe I should put more effort in!!

I WFH and when I finish I call the kids and they help with tidying, dishwasher, dinner prep etc. it takes no time at all.

DH gets home, we all eat together and they have usually done their homework from when they got home to when I call them.

Then we might watch something together or divide and do things separately. Don’t understand your set up though. I think you need to get the kids to help.

You're not alone, I'm doing things until 9.30 usually, then I sit down and watch TV etc and go to bed around midnight. I am more of a night owl though - I need to get things straight in the evening as I don't get up early enough to do it in the morning.

This evening for example went like this
7pm DH doing dishes and clearing up while I was supervising DC homework.
7:40pm DC got ready for bed
8-9pm DD8 reading with DH/alone, while DS11 and I were chatting, packing school bags and sorting laundry.
9pm Said goodnight to DD, DS in bed reading
9.30pm Said goodnight to DD and lights off

So a mixture of basic chores and spending quite a lot of time with DC.

I'm the exact same OP I don't know the answer!

Once kids (3 and 6) are in bed, we’ve usually done all the chores already. One of us will load dishwasher after dinner for example, it will be unloaded in morning when we are doing breakfast, a quick whizz round from one of us to tidy up while the other is sorting kids, and so on. So we have from about 8 to whenever we go to bed to do stuff together or separately.

Oh god our 2.5 year old is a late sleeper everyone keeps telling me it’ll get better 🙈

I feel like this every night. I don’t get an evening at all

Single parent. My 7yo only went to sleep eventually at 10.15pm. Read to 10yo and he’s gone to sleep just now. Am shattered and going to bed now. Downstairs an utter mess but no time to sort. Rinse and repeat til th end of the week

We have 3 kids and once we’ve eaten at around 730 we sit together and watch tv. We sort kids and do household jobs before and after work. I mean we could do more cleaning and tidying if we wanted to martyr ourselves but we don’t!

Everything is done by the time we've put the kids to bed at 7:30. Washing up etc is done by person not putting kids to bed. We do laundry on the weekend.

I feel that way too quite often. 5 days a week there is no 'other times of the day' to do things that need done, they have to be done in the evening.

I’ve never done any chores after 7pm.

Well, the obvious one is that you unload the dishwasher in the morning.
Why can't the washing go on earlier in the evening?
Lunches take, what, 5 minutes? Which can be done before your child goes to bed.
Your time should be your own from 8.30pm.

How can it possibly take all evening to do that?

We take turns to clean up after dinner, the kids at those ages take turns to empty the dishwasher, putting washing on is a 5 min task, same for chucking in the dryer when it's done 🤷🏼‍♀️ Easily sat down by 8 if not earlier - I will go to the gym and be back for then if it's not my turn to do stuff at home