To not understand how people have an evening.

[Littlebittiredoflife]

My children are 8 and 12 and we've not had an evening for basically that long. 8 year old is in bed by half 8 and older one up later but sorts themselves out. We're always washing up, prepping lunches, putting washing on, unloading dishwasher, until at least 10pm at night. I mean at least one of us is (obviously not me tonight as I'm writing this). I saw someone who said they watch TV together then one of them goes and reads and the other plays video games- are they getting in bed at midnight? Obviously when they were younger and needed more help with sleep and eating I accepted we wouldn't have much time to ourselves, either together or apart but we still don't seem to be getting any.

Also I'm aware we do have an evening but it seems to be spent on routine and never pleasure!

a 10 minute bath and a 10 minute story is all that should be needed and then lights off they need to be going to sleep.

As for screaming blue murder, thats not acceptable behaviour

Why don’t you eat with your children?
I naturally prefer to eat later but it just didn’t suit family life so we trained ourselves to eat at the same time as the children. It has dual benefits of saving time and also giving us all an opportunity to chat/catch up on our days in otherwise busy evenings.

Dishwasher usually gets unloaded in the morning, packed-lunch is also done in the morning. We get up at 6am, out the door by 7:30am. In the evening laundry takes ten minutes and is done whilst supervising the primary school age kids getting ready for bed, youngest needs somebody to bath her, oldest showers herself. Both kids are in bed and read too by 7:30pm, older one can read till 8pm but doesn't need us. We have 8pm till 10:30pm to ourselves except one night a week I take oldest to her sport. Sometimes we eat a separate dinner, we read, watch TV or play video games or sometimes work or do admin but not for the whole time.

Wrt the slow eater, do they have additional needs or are they being a slow coach and faffing around? If the latter then I think getting up and clearing the table after 30 ish mins is absolutely fine and might speed them up a bit.

Also…I’m assuming you both work full time. If you don’t then house jobs and even some meal prep should be done e earlier in the day so that all you have to do in the evening is serve the meal, eat it and clear away after it. The kids can wash their lunch boxes and get the next day’s ready when they get in from school.

We get a couple of evenings together every week.

I will admit I cut corners. My house is not extremely clean, dinners are not insta-worthy.

Also, DH works from home three days a week and I'm often in and out during the day as I work for myself We are older parents and ourslifestyles have changed dramatically in the last ten years. Previously we both worked in offices, up to 60 hours a week. I shudder now at the thought of seeing DC just for tucking into bed and dropping their sleepyheads off to childcare on the way in.

Could I offer some suggestions?

Make much easier meals that are one pot only. We have dishwasher safe pots with handles that snap off. They work on hob, in oven and as serving bowls. They really speed things up. We have an air fryer too. We have a cleaner once a week. The rest of the week it's quick clean as you go. I appreciate this may be out of budget but the same principle of one focused big clean remains. Speed up the lunches, if you're making sandwiches, batch prep filler. Make double portions for dinner and reserve up the next day. The dishwasher and other jobs should be done simultaneously with cooking or eating; call the kids in, younger sets table and sweeps floor, older one stacks dishwasher.

I have most of the kitchen clean when I'm serving then I finish off when DH puts DC to bed.i go up for a cuddle. Or vice versa. One load of laundry is out on in the morning, hung out at lunchtime and taken in by DH as I'm doing dinner.

I think you can figure it out if you drop standards a bit, look for more convenient methods and get everyone helping.

I would love if you could share some of your batch cooking recipes please!

This is totally us. The kids need quite a lot of focus in the evening, they just don’t seem
able to remember the same basics they’ve been doing every school day for years and not do they do things you ask. So it’s ‘unpack your bag’ repeated 3 times, then reminding them the lunchbox needs unpacking too, an argument when asked to lay the table, individually shepherding them to the shower, we wash the 3 yo and progressively more crossly tell the older ones to soap up and get out of the shower, then they muck around while you say go and get your pyjamas on.. go and get your pyjamas on, you’re still naked and why are you in the living room. You do not need to go through the living room to get to your bedroom GET YOUR PYJAMAS ON. Etc.
so if one person has some exercise or a meeting it’s 9:30 and dinner won’t be cleaned up as the last of the kids is barely in bed and we are starting dinner washing preparing lunches what’s needed for the next day what’s needed for sports etc online shopping. And collapse. Rinse and repeat.

Totally missing the point of the thread, but this is pure madness to me. Life is too short for things that "don't go in the dishwasher".

Firstly - everything goes in the dishwasher.

Nothing is "too dirty" for the dishwasher.

You surely aren't using lovely hand painted crockery for every day meals?

This is similar to us however we also have two dogs in the mix and the kids are much younger.

We get up, sort the kids for nursery, unload dishwasher and get out the house for 7:30am. Get home from work around 6pm.

We aim to have either batch cooked meals (Spag bol, Chilli etc) or something that we can pre set the oven for so that it is ready for 6:15pm.

Dinner is usually done by 6:45/50, 30 minutes playing with the kids. Bath 7:15/730, kids into bed by 8, one child each, downstairs for 8:30 and then one of us takes the dogs out for a walk the other finishes tidying. 9:30pm we get to sit down together for anywhere from 1-2 hours depending on how tired we are.

I wish we could do that! We seem to have at least a full load of washing every day!

Well if DH is cooking (say a Sunday roast for example), I will wash everything he's finished using as he's going. I wash pans and baking trays as he's serving up and then the only things left to wash at the end of the meal are plates, cutlery and the odd serving bowl.

Definitely don’t do any of that with older children!

Yes, when they’re ready were babies and toddlers and were asleep by 7:30pm. But they are now teens/older primary age and we are busy in the evenings. We don’t eat dinner until 7:30pm because there is stuff to do in the afternoons. And one of them doesn’t get home from sports training until 9:15pm several nights a week. So then she has to eat dinner and shower and do any remaining homework and then it’s 10/10:30pm.

I do get to do things I enjoy, like I’m often in bed reading by 9pm some nights (when I am not doing sports taxiing), then Dh tidies up kitchen. But we aren’t having like relaxing date nights for hours in the evening. We aren’t both available like we used to be. It’s like either/or.

It’s true though that we DID used to stay up til 11/midnight to have time together. But I am 45, not 30 anymore. I have no desire to spend extra time with Dh if it means 2 hours less sleep! We go to bed now.

So tonight I got in at 4pm with DC, emptied bags and had a snack. They tidied their rooms whilst I hoovered, wiped the kitchen floor and swept out the fire. That took about 1.5 hours for me with a small break in between. So finished around 6pm

It does sound like it maybe just takes you and your husband longer than average to get things done. I'm an all-or-nothing person so I'm either not doing a task or I'm doing it on a speed run so maybe not the best example, but I don't think it would take me more than 30-40 minutes at most to empty bags, put out a snack for the children, hoover, wash the floor and sweep the fire.

Have you ever tried gaming chores? Sometimes when we're knackered but the house is a mess my husband and I will set a 20 minute timer and see how much we can do before it goes off. It makes it kind of a game and we're always amazed at how much we can do between us in 20 minutes. Maybe something like that would help concentrate the work you're doing into shorter bursts of time.

I want to eat my dinner when it’s fresh and hot. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. And my kids wouldn’t want to eat what we eat and is so tiresome trying to enjoy dinner listening to never ending whining.

It’s probably too late now but our kids what we eat because it’s all they’ve ever been offered (bar the autistic one with ARFID 😏). Last night we all had a hot Thai beef noodle salad.
What are they whining about over dinner? Maybe they’d whine less if you were all sitting down together?

This thread makes no sense to me, the jobs the OP describes as taking 90 minutes should be half an hour tops.

Washing up and loading a dish washer? Hoovering for ages? Putting washing in and taking it out is ten minutes in total, unless you stand over the machine while it works.

If you take half an hour to do a ten minute job you will be short of time.

Buy crockery and cutlery that goes in the dishwasher.

Line baking trays with paper so they don't need washing or not much washing.

Batch cook and freeze in tubs that fit enough for family. At the moment I have bolognaise sauce, a cottage pie, chickpea and aubergine curry, mixed bean chilli and veg and barley soup in my freezer. I then just cook rice/pasta/extra veg. Take out the meal the night before and leave in the fridge.

Some nights we just have something on toast or jacket potatoes.

One of us goes training each night so wouldn’t be eating. We sometimes do it this way if we want to eat the same as them but it’s rare. Most of my friends simply aren’t having kids. They think it just takes them away from their interests, and it’s true. I have no regrets from having children - they’re great fun - but I’m so exhausted. If house prices were more reasonable I could work part time, it would all be much more doable.

A lot of that would have been done while the kids ate breakfast.
Wash load goes on overnight and in those days, got put into the tumble drier in the morning. Now it gets hung up. You didn't mention ironing - that would be done at the weekend while watching TV.
Lunch gets made during breakfast.
Very small amount of washing up as the dishwasher does most of it. Usually done by one while the other does bed. If really bad, left to steep overnight and I would do while kids had breakfast. Quick clean of kitchen, tidy of lounge and folding of clothes from tumble drier also done during the kids' bed routine or after if DH was away. So probably 30 mins max housework after kids in bed.

And yes, get the kids doing more. Eg. getting their own breakfast, helping empty dishwasher, tidying toys. I was never successful with putting clothes away though 🙁

My kids aren’t hungry kids. They’d happily not eat any dinner which is what they’d do if they didn’t like it, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. And I don’t think force feeding is good either.

Why don't you put a wash on when you get home rather than leave it so late?

We have max 30 mins of housework in the evening, mainly tidying the kitchen after dinner and never laundry at that time. Usually sit down for TV at 8.30 or 9, sometimes DH walks the dog in the evening so I'll play computer games. Bed at 10/10.30

I work hybrid, so laundry tasks are done on wfh days in my breaks. Dishwasher either at breakfast time or it goes on as soon as I get home from work/finish work. Packed lunches was always my job at breakfast time when we did them

During the week we do laundry, bins, dishes, worktops and occasionally sweep the floor. Anything else is left until the weekend when maybe it will get done or maybe not. Our house certainly doesn’t look dirty. No one needs to do daily hoovering.