Wish you had more time to spend together as a family? This easy secret made a big difference for us and allows us to regularly spend quality time together as a family!
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We were in for a big surprise soon after we got married 9 years ago. We thought that once we were married, we’d have all the time in the world to hang out and just be together…..or at least it would feel that way since we’d be with each other way more than when we were dating! And while there were occasional moments when that felt true, the reality was that most of the time we ended up feeling frustrated because it was just so hard to actually get quality time together!
Between our jobs, remodeling our fixer-upper home, housework, church functions, extended family activities, evenings out with friends, and just personal downtime, before we knew it a week would fly by and we would end up feeling like we didn’t really have much time to truly connect.
After several months of feeling frustrated, we finally sat down to come up with a solution. We knew that unless we were intentional about solving this problem, it would only get worse as we started a family and had even more things demanding our time! And I have to say that the solution we came up with has been one of the best decisions that we’ve ever made for our family! And the great thing is, anyone can make it work for their life and their family!
A Simple Solution for Creating Family Time
What was our solution? We simply chose to set aside one evening a week and make it “our” night. At first, we dubbed it “Date Night”, but after we started having children, it didn’t feel like much of a date anymore, 🙂 so we changed the name to “Family Night” instead.
What exactly does family night look like?
1. We Plan Our Schedules around Family Night
This simply means that Family Night is already “booked” on our calendar and so if someone wants to do something with us on a Tuesday evening, we’ll say no. Obviously, there have been occasional times when we’ve made exceptions and switched our Family Night to another evening. But as a general rule, we are slow to do that because once we start changing it too much, it’s too easy to keep fudging and then soon we struggle to have a Family Night at all!
We’ve found that it works best for us to stick with having Family Night the same evening each week. It makes it easy to remember when it is and also helps us be more consistent with making it happen.
2. We are Intentional About Doing Something Meaningful Together
These evenings are all about spending quality time together, so electronic devices are set aside and we try to focus on just being with each other and doing things that build our family relationships or create memories.
Sometimes we go for a walk around the city. Other times we’ll play board games or something like “I Spy” together. On a warm evening, we may enjoy a picnic at the park or take a hike together. Sometimes we’ll attend a baseball game or other event. And since watching movies is a rare thing around here and considered something special, occasionally we might even all snuggle together on the couch and have a family movie night*. Basically, as long as it’s something that we all enjoy and can do together, it’s an option!
Family Night has become an evening that we all look forward to each week! Our children especially have fun anticipating it and it has been an easy way for us to consistently have quality time together as a family, even during the very busy seasons of our life.
Julie@frugallyblonde.com
I will have to try Vid Angel. My 14 year old is only allowed to watch some Pg-13 movies. I bet this would be a great way to let him see more and still have me feeling comfortable about what he is watching. There are so many Marvel and DC Comic movies that would be fun for him to see if they weren’t so graphic and the language.
ThriftyFrugalMom
A friend recently told me about it and we thought too that it’s a great idea! And I love that it’s an inexpensive option too.
Emily
This is such a simple but effective idea. My husband’s work schedule is different every week, so our family nights are always on random days. But I want to be more purposeful in planning activities for us to do together this summer. There are so many possibilities with the warmer, longer days! And the examples you gave prove that you don’t have to spend a ton of money on doing things as a family. 🙂
ThriftyFrugalMom
Yes, work schedules that vary definitely make it more difficult! But you are right, being purposeful makes it doable. And I love how you pointed out that you don’t have to spend a ton of money to do fun things together. So true! In fact most of the time our evenings together don’t cost a thing, yet our kids still love it.