Married with 2 young kids - how to make more time for ourselves?

[theaL]

So I'll start by saying we have very little family help. There is no hope of a loads sleepover or a weekend off.
DC are 4 and 1. DH works full time (and the odd Saturday morning), and I work PT 3 days a week (although it's very full on and I often do work in the evenings including days off).
DC1 starts school in sept so goodbye are any chances of a day off today where we'll need to share our time off to cover school hols. Currently we get the odd 'date day' every other month which just flies by, and our evenings seem to be spent doing house work, washing etc and then not talking and playing on our phones with some shit tv on.

How can we get more time together? I miss my husband and I miss our old life a bit ☹️

I dunno why I said loads of sleepover 😂
I mean no chance of a sleepover

We make a point of having a date night (at home where one of us cooks a surprise meal) each week and a take away once a week so we have a couple of nights where we reduce the housework and get a chance to sit down together.
We have no family help so babysitters are few and far between so we just plan things at home so we don't end up just working, housework, tv then bed.

We've done little competitions around meals too - taking turns to choose a cuisine that the other one has to cook, we've done a cheap challenge - who can make a 3 course meal the cheapest (but it has to be a proper meal).
If there's a film we want to see but can't get to the cinema, we'll pay for it when it's released and make a movie night etc.x

Stop the playing on your phones and watching shit tv.
Play a board game , watch a film or series you both want to watch , sit out in your garden and have a drink with some music on, give each other a massage

Stop messing around on your phones and plan stuff for at least one evening a week- movie night, scrabble and a bottle of wine, cooking something fancy together etc.
Holiday clubs will stop your annual leave being rinsed so you can hopefully still get the odd ‘date day’. Then book a babysitter every couple of months and go out, ask nursery staff if they do it if you don’t want a ‘stranger’. I know both cost money but you’re down to 1 set of nurseries fees.

Designate a night a week to have a date night at home. Make sure it's a night the kids are tired. One of you cooks a dine in option the other puts the kids to bed. It's what we have to do

M and s dine in for two

My son and daughter in law have a date night at home once a week where they choose a country’s cuisine to cook (they’re working alphabetically so started with Argentina, then Belgium etc) and take it in turns to choose the country. They either cook together, which is a lovely thing to do in itself or my son cooks as he’s the foodie and daughter in law organises the cocktails! They love it - it’s something to think and plan for during the week, finding recipes or food ideas etc and gives it all a bit of a focus. You have to agree to have no phones or distractions though - they are thieves of time and intimacy! It’s amazing what deliberately focussing on each other and putting away other distractions for an evening can do for a relationship, you just have to be determined to make it happen.

Let the house go to shit one evening a week and sit and have dinner together after bedtime.

What about a babysitter? Your youngest is still quite young, but when ours was around 2, we had a staff person from her nursery come and babysit her. We'd get her to sleep and then go out to dinner at the village pub, so all babysitter had to do was literally sit in the lounge and make sure the house didn't burn down.