My Evening Routine

If you want to get an idea of my full daily routine, check out My Morning Routine post and My Afternoon Routine post. Today, I’m sharing what I do on a typical day from the time that Riley gets home from work until the time I go to bed. This is easily my favorite time of day because it’s time with my husband!

6:00pm | Riley Gets Home & I Finish Dinner

Sometime around 6:00pm each evening, Riley arrives home from work. As I shared in My Afternoon Routine post, I always make an effort to “cozy-ify” our home so that he comes back to a peaceful environment. So, after he’s greeted me and Charley, and changed into something fresh and comfortable, he’ll usually munch on the appetizer I set out for him or sip a drink (sometimes a beer, sometimes sparkling water). While I get dinner wrapped up and on the table, he’ll usually fool around on his iPad or watch a TV show on Netflix. We’ll converse lightly, but mostly I focus on finishing dinner and allow him some time to decompress and relax after working on his feet most of the day. We have the rest of the evening to chat–everyone needs a moment to breathe when they first get home!

6:30pm | Eat Dinner

Around 6:30pm, we sit down to eat. Unless one of us doesn’t feel well, we always eat at our table. It’s a habit that we started now before we have babies as we know the importance of around-the-table family dinners for children. Plus, this is when we get to share about our days, talk about any challenges we had, and work through any decision that we need to make together. We really love our quiet dinners sans-TV and cherish the time together.

If I know that there’s a major household decision to be made, I’ll usually text Riley in the afternoon to warn him so that he has a few hours to think through it. For example, a couple of months ago, when we needed to book our Christmas flights (which are $$$), I texted him something like “Hey! We need to book our MD flights for Christmas in the next few days since the prices are going up. I’ll look up our options and we can decide what makes sense at dinner, so that I can book the flights tomorrow. Does that sound good?” He agreed, and at dinner, I had a piece of paper with all of our flight options, dates, and prices on it. We looked over it together and discussed it, settling on a week-long trip with reasonably-priced flights (for Christmas, that is). Another reason why we love having a formal dinner each weeknight: it’s a predictable time for us to discuss things daily.

7:15pm | Clean Up

After about a 45 minute dinner, we’ll clean up together. As much as I don’t love doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, I love doing it with Riley. We’ll laugh and chat as we clean up, and sometimes we’ll dance around to Taylor Swift or Carly Rae Jepsen, which always makes me feel like I’m in a romantic comedy.

We do a complete kitchen reset every night so that the mornings (which we both struggle through) are as smooth as possible. This means doing all of the dishes, putting everything away, and wiping down all of the counters with disinfectant (I love this one for both its scent and how well it works!).

7:30pm | Take Charley On a Walk

Once we’re full and our kitchen is cleaned, many nights we’ll take Charley on a walk around the neighborhood. Though we live in an apartment complex, it is situated directly next to a lovely little neighborhood, so we just walk around there, admiring the pretty houses and talking about our own house hunt (which has lasted a year to date #exhausting). This is a great time to talk about what we plan on doing over the weekend, share news from family or friends, or just generally express how we’re feeling in our marriage. Our premarital counselors told us countless times how important it would be in our marriage to communicate, all the time, about everything. The hour that we’re walking Charley is a great time for us to do just that: communicate. Sometimes we’ll laugh the entire time, other times we’ll make legitimate plans for getting together with friends or going shopping or house hunting, and still other times we’ll work through a disagreement or frustration one of us is experiencing.

This hour-long walk will admittedly get shifted in the coming weeks as the sun begins to set earlier and earlier. Perhaps we’ll make a point to wrap up dinner earlier, or maybe I’ll walk Charley in the afternoon as well so that we can go on a brief evening walk instead of a long one.

8:30pm | Settle In For The Evening

Ahh, this time of night is so wonderful. Upon arriving home from our walk, we’ll both change into loungewear or pajamas and cuddle up on the couch. Some nights, we’ll share a cup of decaf coffee or tea and some dessert. We usually flip on a TV show, but on rare occasions, we’ll choose a movie to watch. Sometimes, we’ll play a board game like Monopoly, Backgammon, or Pass The Pigs (which I love). Basically, we just relax and spend time together with no agenda. And because our home is so compact, I can work on the computer while Riley’s watching TV and we’ll still be less than 10 feet from each other!

11:00pm | Get Ready For Bed

Around 11:00pm, I’ll head into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth with my iPad in hand. (I always watch YouTube videos (usually beauty how-tos) while I get ready for bed…it helps me to take my time and really take care of myself because I stay entertained! 🙂 ) This usually takes me around 20-25 minutes as there are quite a few steps in my evening face washing routine (all products listed here, and a video of my routine here–morning and evening face washing routines are the same!).

During this time, Riley always takes Charley out for a walk before bed. Our little guy just turned two, so he still has a lot of energy running through him! Riley really enjoys the time in the cool fresh air to unwind before he goes to bed, especially since we live in the country and the stars are absolutely bright and beautiful! And Charley loves this walk, well, because he’s a dog. But it also helps him fall asleep fast once they’re back since he’s tired.

11:30pm | Get In Bed & Read

Once I’m ready for bed, I turn off all the lights in our apartment, take my vitamins (I take two of these Vitamin C capsules, one or two of this brand of Magnesium, and one of these B-Complex vitamins), and crawl into bed. Riley heads into the bathroom at this time to brush his teeth, floss, and wash his face.

We agreed on a no-technology-in-the-bedroom rule when we first got married. We charge our phones outside of our bedroom door and use old-fashioned alarm clocks to wake up. We either chat or read before bed instead of scrolling through our phones, which helps us to unwind more quickly and fall asleep faster. Sometimes, we’ll just lay with Charley between us, petting him and cooing over him before he goes in his kennel for the night (can any dog lovers relate?).

12:00am | Goodnight!

Right around midnight, we’ll turn off the lights on our bedside tables, pray together, and go to sleep. That is, however, unless we stay up talking, which happens about once a week. It always makes me laugh when we finally quiet down and fall asleep around 2:00am because it reminds me that I’m living out the quote, “Marriage is getting to have a sleepover with your best friend every night!” We are so blessed!

 

That’s what a typical evening looks like for me! 🙂 What do your hours after dinner entail? Fill me in!