What is your routine?

[roseandstay]

I have a newborn and a toddler.
I am wanting to know what everyone’s routine is in the evening that allows both yourself and your partner to have a quick shower and get ready for bed. For context, my DH always cooks and usually wants to get straight on with cooking when he gets home from work. He spends around 45 minutes after getting home on the toilet and going in the shower before getting straight on with prepping dinner so I have to stay with the two children. We have dinner altogether and then we conquer and divide. We bath our toddler and baby, pyjamas, clean and tidy up as best as we can before we put our eldest to bed and the other watches the baby. I always shower and get ready for bed after our toddler has gone to sleep at 7pm and I can hand the baby to DH but this is also when I am catching up on household tasks, cleaning, laundry etc so not finishing and able to sit down until maybe 8.30/9pm. I want to be able to be ready for the evening/bed and sit down with my DH or just generally enjoy the evening once our toddler has gone to bed but I am having to wait to shower and sort myself out. By the time I am finishing, I want to go to sleep because it’s late and my newborn will be up in the night. What does everyone else do?

Hopefully I won’t give too much of a disjointed reply here OP but just thinking to when my 6 month old was first born and my boy was 19 months, I think I tried to get as much stuff done in the daytime as possible to leave myself clear in the evenings - 7pm when the children were in bed was our cut off to relax and enjoy the evening. Does your toddler go to nursery at all or are you with them both everyday? Also does your toddler still have a nap? I used to whack my baby in the carrier and get laundry etc done in the daytime when my toddler was asleep which helped. Also do you bathe both your children every day? The newborn defo doesn’t need it, could one of you do the toddler bath and the other have the baby in a carrier and get the tidying etc done at the same time? What other household tasks do you have that need to be done? 1.5-2 hours to do stuff after they’re asleep seems like so much! Could you earmark laundry for the day and then just a quick tidy up and wipe over surfaces etc after dinner? Also what time does your DH get home from work because surely he could squeeze out 15 mins in between his 45 minute toilet time and doing dinner to take over the children to let you have a shower? Or maybe you could do some of the prep for dinner in the daytime so it frees up more cooking time when he gets home?

Sorry I know there’s loads of questions there but just trying to understand the routine a bit more. It would have driven me mad not getting to chill out once my toddler was asleep and having loads more jobs to do!

These are really helpful things - thank you for the suggestions and ideas!
My toddler is at nursery three days a week so I have them both on my own two days a week and I try to really be present on those two days to spend proper time with my toddler.
I usually try to get as much as I can done on the days it is just me and my baby but the days and nights just vary so much. It’s trying to find a balance between soaking in the moments with my baby when it’s just us and also knowing that having things done just makes me feel better mentally because everyone’s lives operates better when the house is clean, laundry done etc etc
im sure you’ll know what I mean when I say how much I get done and what I get done in the day completely depends on so many things e.g fussy baby, crying a lot, bad night and I’m exhausted, appointments but other days, everything gets done and the evening is so much easier. The laundry and just general mess from room to room is usually the bits I’m trying to keep on top off after my toddler has gone to bed, I don’t know where it comes from half of the time!!

Ah your situation sounds so similar to mine! When my baby was born my toddler stayed in nursery from Tuesdays-Thursdays and I wanted to keep Mondays and Fridays free for nothing but the children! I did (and still do) laundry on Tuesdays, Thursdays and once at the weekend, and every evening at 6.15/6.30 we have a tidy up, my toddler helps me by making a game out of putting the toys away, putting things in the bin and wiping the surfaces and then after that it’s wind down time and no more toys out so the house is pretty tidy when they go to bed. Also a quick 5 minute wipe over the surfaces here and there or a quick vacuum when you get a chance does wonders for not letting things get out of control. Also have you heard of that one step change thing where it’s like as soon as you’re done with something rather than just setting it down somewhere put it straight back in its place, sounds so simple but for me it made a massive difference and stopped things building up. Maybe also look at what is essential house maintenance and what can be deprioritised, so maybe if you’re trying to fit in things like relentless ornament polishing, skirting boards, cleaning window etc just make that more of a bi-weekly task to take the pressure off for now.

I’m exactly the same as you, I need a tidy and clean house otherwise I don’t function properly so I completely get the need to try and keep on top of it, for what it’s worth though my little girl is now 6 months old and settled into a nap routine beautifully so remember if your normal standards are slipping it’s only temporary and before you know it, managing these things will become a hell of a lot easier. The first six weeks of my newborn and toddler sometimes had me in tears and now although I still have testing times, I feel like I’m in control - the children have time together, one on one time and the house is under control. The newborn phase where you’re learning to adjust will always be the worst but you’ll find your rhythm and it’ll become second nature. Good luck OP, you have some lovely times to come, I promise it’s gets better 😊

Try to get stuff done before the kids are in bed.
Put a load of laundry on in the morning so you can hang it out/put it in the dryer at lunch time.
Personally I liked to cook to get a break from the kids!
Clean the kitchen, load the dishwasher etc as much as possible as you cook.
One of you do bath time while the other cleans up downstairs.
Then by the time they're in bed, everything is done.

I don't have a toddler but have a 5 yo and a 4 month old.

My partner gets home between 5.30 and 6. We make dinner. Eat dinner then head upstairs with 5 year old between 6.30 and 7. We juggle holding baby, helping 5 yo get ready for bed and tidy the kitchen. Usually the person getting the 5yo dressed has the baby. One of us does her teeth and stories. She then gets 20-30 minutes of audio stories. I feed and hold the baby. If he's happy, I stay upstairs and sit with the eldest and dad cleans the kitchen. If not I'm downstairs with baby and my partner stays upstairs with eldest. About 7.45 audiobooks get switched to meditation and we are downstairs for the evening. A quick bit of tidying of downstairs and we are on the sofa by 8-8.30 until 9.45-10

Most days the dishwasher is unloaded whilst we make dinner and loaded whilst we finish eating and getting eldest ready for bed. If not we do it after we have watched some TV. We do my daughters school bag and snacks and my partners lunch and any bits in the kitchen that needs finishing.

Over the weekend I like to get to empty washing basket situation and most of the washing dry and put away. That leaves a lot less in the week. We are doing part time cloth nappies and exclusively cloth wipes. So that dictates some of our washing timings. Washing is pretty much exclusively my job so it's important to let my partner know if it's getting too much. It was getting too much this weekend so he had the eldest helping him cook dinner whilst I sat with the baby in the bouncer chair folding the clothes.

My partner does the majority of the cooking and dishwasher loading. I unload a few pieces as I can during the day whilst making drinks (if baby permits) or I hand baby over to dad when he walks in. We do tumble down meals which helps make the evenings easier. My partner works from home once or twice a week so on days he is at home as well as the weekend we make meals where the main part is enough for 2-3 days of meals. For example on Thursday we had roast chicken (partner WFH) using 1 leg and one breast. Friday partner worked late so I made a white pasta sauce with the chicken juices saved from the day before with the other chicken breast, frozen veg, mushrooms and spinach (only the veg for eldest). Saturday partner stripped the rest of the meat off and made a paella and boiled the rest down for stock used on Sunday to make gravy with the roast pork joint. We still have another day of paella left and enough pork for two more meals. We make the most of time when we can cook and the other days we make the most of already cooked components of meals to make something quickly.

We have found that if we don't have 30-60 minutes of sitting on the sofa together in the evening we don't feel human and life gets more fraught. We prioritise this time over getting everything done in the week. Over the course of a week every thing gets done. Clothes are always washed, dried and put away in time, food gets bought, meals get cooked. We ensure that the lounge where we sit however, is always tidied before we sit down so we aren't staring at it in an evening.

We have never done a daily bath with eldest. She has a bath once or twice a week and a shower after swimming. When she was a toddler it would make her hyper so wasn't part of our bathroom routine.

Disorder annoys me and mess annoys my partner so between the two of us we get most of the jobs done. Anything that's daily my partner does, weekly jobs are more in my strengths.,

Mine are now 4.5 and 1.5 but we have dinner ready for between 5.30 and 6pm. We make sure to eat together but oldest takes ages eating so while she finishes, DH and I both clean the kitchen, wash up, clear toys and hoover downstairs whilst the younger one plays/'helps'. I do a lot of washing up as I go along so we are super efficient with this.

One of us will take the youngest up first while older one has a bit of play time. We alternate bath and bedtime between us so if I do my oldest one day, I'll do the youngest the next day. Usually aim for bedtime between 7-7.30 but more often than not it ends up being 7.30-8pm. After that it's sort any laundry and stuff for the morning then chill. We both shower in the mornings but could easily fit it into the evenings. Tbh my husband does the bulk of laundry (except putting it away) so that really helps. When mine were toddler and newborn it was still largely the same except I'd have to breastfeed in between all that so DH would do most of the toddler bath/bedtimes. I would do a lot in the house during nap time or even when baby was awake and non mobile eg everyday dusting etc.