If you and partner work FT, how do you get time for yourself?

[MightyMoMo]

I mean time for just me on my own to do whatever it may be and wondering how people achieve this? Is it just the hour before kids wake up and the hour after they've gone to sleep?

Build into your work day (lunch hr, commute) Pay someone else to help at the weekends, use AL to take ‘me’ days… if you are lucky enough to have helpful family ultilise them. It is tough - we are in the same position

I don’t. 10 years in and quite frazzled!

We don't / very rarely

Annual leave is all used for school holidays so can't take "me" days

We have 1 year old twins and a 5 year old. Family offers of "help" for a couple of hours seem to disappear the minute you have twins 🤣

If you mean with the house all to oneself, it’s vanishingly rare. Only DH, who WFH, gets that.

Time for me outside the house is fine. I meet a friend for a film, going into town for a mooch round the shops, go for a long walk at the end of the day. I tell my DH I’m going, then go. He does the same.

We each have a weekend morning to ourselves while other has DD.evenings i'll plan things with my friends and him with his,so normally we are each out 1 eve a week as well. We spend weekend days or eves with friends usually,or if i haveaday athomewith her she plays and i can watch my tv or something

Trading off with your partner - you get some time to yourself at the weekend/an evening out and so, separately, do they. We both have one fixed evening each week that we're out, a lie-in each at the weekend and then the rest is ad hoc and as and when.

If there's two of you, is there a reason why you can't take it in turns to have time to yourself? We did 2 evenings each a week, one date night and one 'chunk' (4 hours ish) of a weekend each.

We don’t. I get snatched minutes, like having a Kindle propped up next to the stove whilst stirring pans, or on MN and running a bath for dc.

We have an hour after the baby is in bed. We sometimes watch TV, sort out life admin or scroll thoughtlessly on our phones as a way to wind down. It's not productive but we need it. I can't beleive I used to go to the gym/socialise in the week after 7 when now I'm totally shattered by 7.30 😂
We do other stuff with friends separately which is lovely and sometimes family can babysit and we can do something together of an evening.

Well, it only takes one person to look after the dc, so each week both of us (on different nights) kept up with something we did pre-dc, thereby each getting an evening off.
When they were little and got up earlier than we would have liked, we took turns to be the one to get up with them and the one to have a lie in.

At various other points, we'd communicate with each other so the other one would look after them so each of us could do whatever it was we wanted to do (say, see a film or go to a sporting even or go out for a day or weekend with hobby, or go to a gig or theatre etc etc).

Sometimes we would pay a babysitter so we could go out together.