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!

Why are you washing dishes when you have a dishwasher? We empty in morning and then fill it up during the day and it goes on at night and ready and dry to be empty in morning.

we have glasses in dishwasher and they are fine. Modern soap powders don’t cloud them like in the past. My husband washes up stuff that we either can’t fit or can’t go in dishwasher like the pan we used and I then wipe kitchen down, clean cooker, wipe dining table, sort food bin.

we have a large storage tub in kitchen and fill it with recycling and then DS takes it out to bin every eve so it doesn’t build up.

I just stick them in the DW as they make the bin smell

All the wierd DW stuff like ruining glasses and having to rinse plates is something from the past .
Let the DW do its job!

Yeah I just emptied my dishwasher. It was pretty much full, it took me four minutes.

I have a 5 yo and a 4mo. We need an hour each evening to decompress so we prioritise that. We manage it most nights. My 5yo has been a terrible sleeper and it's only in the last 3 months that she has gone to sleep without one of us sat on her floor next to her waiting for her to go to sleep.

I'm not working at the moment but when I was our routine was.
Finish work to get home between 5.30-6 one of us would pick up daughter from nursery/after school club. The other would get home to start dinner. The other gets in and unloads the dishwasher from the night before, does a bit of tidying. Dinner by 6.15 finish by 6.40-6.45. We clear the table and load the dishwasher. Head up to do bedtime at 7, child usually asleep by 8.30. One did bedtime and the other a quick tidy up, put some washing on etc. By 8.30-9 we are both ready to sit down to watch something. At 10 TV off we make lunches get ready for the morning. Upstairs and in bed for 10.30.

Mornings are up and out. My partner gets up at 6.20 out by half past. I would be up at 7.45 and out for nursery /school run at 8.15

We try to do the tidying as we go over the week and leave the hoovering for the weekend. We used to have a slim line dishwasher and we would just have to accept it went on twice. We would have it loaded as we made dinner with as much as we could fit in it. Prioritising the easy clean stuff - pans soaking in hot soapy water. Run a quick cycle as soon as we finish dinner. Empty this before we go to bed and load with the rest of the dishes. Put it on the next morning on a longer cycle of needed with the breakfast dishes. We now have a full size and it goes once a day/ twice in three days depending on what we are eating.

We have a list of quick meals and batched cooked meals in the freezer. We try to cook two days worth of meals every time we cook so we have one evening where we spend more time cooking and one evening where we spend more time cleaning. If we didn't have an ingredient we would switch it to another day.

Hi, single mum here, two ND kids (11 & 12) and possibly me too. Kids and I home by 4. They do homework, then sort themselves out for school the next day, I float around doing housework and dinner downstairs and helping as needed. Dinner is at 6.30pm. Dishwasher is loaded, we are all in bed by 8.30 (menopause is killing me). House could do with being cleaner but I try and catch up at the weekend.

Things that work for me here ... Not saying they will work for you but maybe something will.

Gousto for five meals. It arrives Monday, I sort all of the ingredients into five separate bags. At least three meals are things that ten minutes to prep and get shoved in the oven for 40 minutes. Pans are at least soaking before we eat or shoved in the dishwasher. When the kids were small and irritating, I set a thirty minute timer, if they hadn't eaten, they were done, no pudding. Eating quickly happened fast and it helped my sanity as I knew there was a limit to the torture. Tvs, screen, background noises were off so they focused. I appreciate the underweight thing but if you can try this for three days, it might help. I will say I'm lucky as the children have mandatory school meals (private school). By when I have done lunches (covid), it was a sandwich, apple, crisps and snack and took me five minutes.

Washing/ dryer has a timer. I put the load in a basket before bed by my bedroom door. I take it down first thing. It's loaded and scheduled to finish so I can take it out and hang it up when I get home. I do one load a day. Colours Monday and Wednesday, darks Tuesday and Thursday, whites Friday. Anything like towels and bedding that wash and tumble dry go on overnight and extras at the weekend. If I have more than one load, I prioritise underwear, socks, pj's and school uniform. Kids have a small washing basket each, I put their dry clothes in there and anything that i find lying around. After homework, they do this. Sorting out their clothes and massively reducing how much they have makes it easier for them to manage this. Ironing is something that gets dropped if we are busy.

Lists! I've been doing this since the children can read, we have a week plan per child listing what they are wearing to school, any after school clubs etc and what they need to pack for school the next day. They manage this. I will verbally run through it to check. We have a list of what clothes they wear to school, when needs packing for swimming, football etc. They have to tell me if they are missing anything before bed. If they are missing stuff in the morning, I will only help if I have the capacity to. This includes fancy hairstyles (girls!).

I use family link, their devices all switch off at 6pm. This gives them a natural window to get things done. Devices stay off until eating and getting ready for bed is done. This includes music. It's amazing how fast things happen in the silence!

It seems a lot of your issues are the dishwashing. Your time is worth more than this. Set a budget, try marketplace, ikea, charity shops and car boot sales and get dishwasher safe stuff or at least stuff that you don't care about. I dishwash everything and if it's still dirty in the morning, I just put it on again to run while I am out. Go for done rather than perfect.

Hope at least one thing helps!

I've just read through your posts again.

We have a slow eater too and we do a mix of sitting with them and doing bits in the kitchen. We have a kitchen diner which helps. One us will stay at the table but the other will clear the other dishes, load the dishwasher and make us all a drink. Then return to the table and the other of us would go and sort out some pudding. It gives our daughter extra time to eat without us all sat around watching her eat waiting for pudding but also gives her a bit of a jolly along that she has had the extra time, she's nearly done it's nearly pudding time and the last few mouthfuls are a bit quicker.

Batch cooking doesn't have to be about making 20 portions of one complete meal. We batch cook components of a meal that takes the longest time too cook and then adapt them each evening into a different quick meal as well as doing tumble down meals.

This week we slow cookers a pack of diced lamb, a lamb shank and a lambs heart. On day 1 we had it as a stew with dumplings. Day 2 we had it with boiled potatoes and veg. Day 3 we added a tin of chick peas and had it with pasta, frozen peas and broad beans.
We buy the largest chicken or pork joints we can buy and then use them for a roast at the weekend and the turn them into a rice or pasta dish the next day. If we are doing chicken thighs I buy double and cook them all using them the following day. It saves time and energy as the oven is only once for two days of food

I think it’s because you’re eating so late. If our evening meal is on the table later than 5:30, we have no evening too. I normally leave my husband’s food in the microwave for him to have when he comes in. I find unloading the dishwasher first thing saves time as dirty stuff goes straight in there rather than two jobs. Other people work different schedules or have shorter commutes though so try not to compare yourself too much.

Of course. On the days when my teens are feeling low or having a rough day they talk for longer and need me more, so I can only imagine how exhausting it is to have it for longer and more regularly.

@Littlebittiredoflife Why are you doing any washing up though? Why not just get enough dishwasher safe plates and pans?

I don't think she's going to do this. It's been mentioned many times. It's the simplest solution to the dishwasher issue but for some reason she won't.
It's ridiculous the amount of time she or her husband need to wash up a few things by hand. They are definitely faffers as far as that is concerned. They could solve this problem by buying stuff that can go in the dishwasher, as you and many others have suggested.
There's no point having a dishwasher if half your stuff won't go in it and you end up wasting hours every week washing it up.

Why arent the kids helping with tbe chores?

Haven't read the full thread, but people are seriously putting washes on before bed/going to work? That is such a fire hazard. I saw someone far upthread saying that it's not, but every source I've seen including the London Fire Brigade says that it is.

Agree also dishwashers overnight are a major fire risk
We put ours on straight after dinner and empty before bed.
Then use Tapo to switch everything off

The dishwasher doesn't know what time is is, it's no more risky at night. The issue is that you may not realize as quickly as you would if you were in the room with it and to say it's a major risk is an exaggeration

Google suggests up to 500 per year which is a tiny proportion on the millions of washes there must be

Dishwashers being a high proportion of all fires isn't the same as them being a major fire hazard

Sometimes needs must and a miniscule risk if worth taking

I’m sure PP realises all that.
Risk isn’t the same as hazard.
It IS more risky to run the dishwasher overnight.

Can't they have school lunches? Then nothing to prep

Exactly, thanks
Im not sure that most people would actually think literally what I wrote meant DW are more prone to fires at night just that the risks involved are greater.
Less likely to catch malfunction earlier, eg noise, smell and less responsive due to it being dark/ soundly asleep .

I should add that I have extensive fire training as part of my job and everythingapart from a bedside lamp/fridge/ freezer is switched off
Those videos are horrific

Yes why make more work for yourself

@Littlebittiredoflife

what about it, OP?? School dinners and cheap basic dishwasher proof crockery to make your life easier 😀

Definitely in the plan to get replace items with everything that is dishwasher proof. However pp have hit the nail on the head and cupboard clutter is a bit of an issue (it took me 15-20 minutes to get ingredients out and equipment out due to how hard it was to find stuff the other day). I wouldn't want to throw everything out though so it's isn't something I feel able to action immediately. The dishwasher is always full when we run it so unless I start running it twice a day it's probably not going to make that much difference.

With regards to school dinners, there is the cost aspect. Much cheaper to do a packed lunch. Regardless me and DH also need packed lunch so they are all done at the same time and it doesn't take much more time to do 3 or 4 instead of 2. They do have school lunch a couple of times a week.

When I've been unsure about getting rid of kitchen stuff, I've boxed it up and put it in the shed/cupboard of doom/loft for a few months to see what I actually end up wanting regularly. Some stuff I know I won't want regularly but still want to keep (bundt tin springs to mind), other stuff went to the charity shop. Other stuff again, I bought a big sideboard which lives in the dining room where semi regularly used stuff lives.

So 2x frying pans, 2x saucepans, oven trays, utensils, knives and chopping boards live in the kitchen, along with crockery, cutlery and glasses. Everything else lives elsewhere.

I also bought some cupboard boxes, for want of a better word, for my ingredients cupboard. So then you're not trying to sift through the whole cupboard and stuff isn't trying to fall out of it onto my head. They look like this but I think they were even cheaper, from Wilko:

https://amzn.eu/d/03g47fC

OP we’ve downsized in the last couple of years and so we have a smaller kitchen now.

I have thought very hard about what I kept and what I allowed to go because living day to day with a cluttered kitchen is my idea of a nightmare. If you’re talking about food ingredients you can do a cupboard at a time, chuck out anything that’s out of date and recognise that you don’t need to replace it (because you haven’t eaten it and so clearly don’t use it very often!) Think about grouping things together to make them easy to find. So we have a drinks cupboard with teas, coffees, hot chocolate and teapots in. This is positioned above where the kettle is. We have a baking cupboard with flour, sugar etc in. Spices and herbs are grouped together and I have a couple of shelves in a cupboard for oils, vinegars, soy sauce etc that I will use in cooking. If you have lots of small items that are alike (like food colourings or small bags of nuts, put them in a box and put a label on the front of the box so if you need nuts you only use to pull out one box to root through. Have a look at your cupboard storage so that things are easily visible. Ikea sells very cheap storage containers of all shapes and sizes which can really help to make sense of your cupboards. Putting a label on the front of the shelf can help too if you have things at the back you can’t see so you can open the cupboard and know where it will be. I don’t spend time finding all my ingredients before I start cooking because I know where they all are and can just reach into the cupboard to get it at the point at which I need it and then put it back again. It makes clearing up much easier when everything has its place.

If it’s also kitchen equipment and crockery that is taking up space you need far less than you think you do. Charity shops are very glad of kitchenware so you won’t just be throwing it away. If you’re not convinced that you won’t need them, pack at least half of them into a plastic box with a lid and store in the garage or similar. I did this with loads of our glasses (DH was convinced we needed them!). We haven’t used them in over a year, not even at Christmas so they’re off to the charity shop at the next opportunity. Space and order will make an amazing difference to the way you live.

If you’re not sure how to go about this, watch a couple of episodes of ‘Sort your life out’ and see how Dilly organises a kitchen!

Too many responses here OP, how on earth does loading/unloading a dishwasher (which you can do whilst cooking dinner?) and putting a wash on (which again you can do whilst cooking dinner) take you so long? Why do your kids not do chores? Why does an 8 year old need to be supervised getting ready for bed - my 2 year old can wee and get in her PJs? Why are you hoovering during the week instead of at the weekend? Just feels like you are doing a lot of unnecessary things. Send the kids to bed at 8 or 8:30, do half an hour and then chill!