10 Fun At Home Date Ideas When You Can Not Go Out
Here are some at home date ideas when you can't afford to date your husband. In some seasons it's hard to make dating your spouse a priority. Don't miss these ideas on how to date your husband when you can't afford dates.
As mamas of young children, we tend to focus most of our time and energy on our children. Especially for those mamas who stay home with their children, it's hard to change this mindset.
It is for me anyway. All-day every day my attention is on my children. When my husband comes home, I'm done. As my daughter would say, “I don't even have one energy left.”
You've heard you should date your husband, but once those words are said you zone out.
You know it's important. You know your marriage is struggling because your time is consumed with kids, the house, work, laundry.
So how do you make marriage work when you can't afford to hire a babysitter once a month, let alone once a week?
It's easy to turn on the television or hop on Facebook or Pinterest, watch Instagram Stories, and zone out. It's even easier to give up and throw up your hands because it's pointless to plan a date night when you know the babysitter will cancel or a kid will get sick.
But friends, that is not how we feed our marriage.
Let's stop this cycle right now.
Maybe you are like us. We don't have family around who can watch our children for free. If we go out, we have to get a babysitter. That costs money and isn't always an option. Here are some practical at home date ideas for how to plan date nights when you can't afford to date. Affiliate links have been used below.
10 At Home Date Ideas with Your Husband
1. Picnic and a Movie at Home.
Go ahead and fix dinner for the kids. You could already have them in bed when your husband comes home, or while one of you is getting the kids ready for bed the other can be set up the picnic. You could pick out a new release or a movie that brings back memories of when you were dating. We love using Redbox to rent movies. You can't beat the price. Just remember to take it back on time! Netflix is another great option if you already subscribe. For the picnic, keep it simple. You want to be able to enjoy your time together.
2. Take an online cooking class together.
This isn't for everyone, but I think it would be fun. Put the kids in bed early and spend the evening in the Kitchen cooking together. I know I've heard a lot of good things about America's Test Kitchen. There are also 20 Essential Cooking Techniques (w/ Brendan McDermott) or Craftsy Food and Cooking Classes just search for baking, which look amazing.
3. If you didn't want to take a class together, you could still make a meal together.
Making sushi together and then eating your creations. Making his favorite meal together with you. If you got neighbors involved (it would really need to be a next-door neighbor since children are sleeping), you could have a cook-off. A stay at home double date!
4. Phone and/or text him during the day to let him know that you are thinking about him.
I am more of a texter, but if you're not, I'm sure he'd still love to hear your voice. If he immediately answers and asks what's wrong, you might need to make more contact during the day :).
5. Leave notes to brighten his day.
On the screen of his laptop, in his briefcase, on the steering wheel of his car, on his cell phone, in his lunch if he takes one. Place a note, or multiple notes wherever you look most.
*If you're going to write something racy, I would come up with code words together or use emoji's to save everyone from embarrassment. Just sayin'.
6. Go outside.
Sit on your front porch or back porch together. Hold hands. Talk. It's really the simple things that we forget to do. It doesn't have to be big and elaborate.
What would life be like if you could flip a switch and be “in the mood”? Okay, maybe there’s no switch. But you can totally change the way you think about sex!
7. Go for a walk as a family and hold hands.
8. Kiss each other first thing in the morning, before he/you leave for work, when he/you return home, and before you go to sleep at least.
9. Make a list of what you love about him.
If your kids are old enough, ask them what they love about Daddy and write them down.
10. Talk.
I don't suggest talking about budgets or finances during this time though. Save that conversation for later. But one of the reasons for at home date ideas is to communicate and talk about life, your feeling, reconnect, and see how you are really doing.
Are you with me? I would love for you to share your ideas on how to date your husband in the comments. Marriage is something that we have to work on. Every. Single. Day. We can't put our marriage in vacation mode or autopilot and expect it to survive. Be intentional. Date your husband. You'll be glad you took the time.
What are some ways that you can be intentional about dating your husband this week?
More Date Ideas
My husband’s schedule is often quite hectic so we make time for each other whenever we can. Some weeks are better than others of course but we do try. Even without kids our time together can be a challenge. It all comes down to priorities. 🙂
You are right, Kim! It is all about priorities. My husband doesn’t have a set schedule each week so he comes home at various times. It’s not easy, but we try to make it work. Thanks for stopping by!!
I love this post!
Hi there! I am co-hosting this week on the Grab A Friend Blog Hop. Thanks for connecting up!
I host a (Not SO) Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop and a TGIF Link Party over at my place — A Peek Into My Paradise… http://apeekintomyparadise.blogspot.com/ I would love for you to link up and follow if you like what you see. =) I follow back – I love making new friends!
Have a terrific week!
Hugs, Cathy
Thanks for stopping by, Cathy! I’ll have to check it out. Thank you!!
Love this post! More moms with young kids need to read it. And we totally have code words. 🙂
Thanks, Gabby! I agree. I wish I had read something like it 4 year ago. Everything I read told me we should have “date nights” every week or at least once a month. We just couldn’t afford that. We needed to change the way we thought about date nights.
Those are some great ideas! Thanks for linking up to Weekend Reads
Thanks for hosting, Paige! It was fun!!
Great tips, Whitney! Sometimes we forget that simple things can mean as much! 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing at All my Bloggy Friends – I can’t wait to see what you share this week!
This has been one of my 2014 goals for Christmas I gave my hubby an envelope with 52 dates in it….one for each week of the year…he has a crazy schedule too so we’ll see how well we do….they are colour coded….there are 35 yellow which means stay at home dates ( include baking cookies, becoming utube certified in some thing, teaching each other something, reading together, etc..)15 green which are low or no cost date night out – only expense would be babysitter- (Picnic in park, skating on the pond, walk on the beach, trip down memory lane) and 2 red..more involved/ costly ones…night away at a b&b and a day trip hiking ….for this we recruit family and will take more planning ……so we choose a colour based on what we can afford/arrange that week..I am really looking forward to dating my husband again.
That’s an awesome idea, Brianne! I love the color coded system. Money is usually the reason we put dating our husbands on the back burner. Thanks for stopping by!!
Something I just realized I’ve been ‘guilty’ of that has to do with the money thing is not trusting that my husband knows what he is doing. For example, he wanted to go out to a fancy hotel for our anniversary and I started to object when I saw the prices of the hotels he was looking at but then I felt convicted and told him to book whatever because I need to show that I trust him in our finances. We just got back from our night away (we do have family close to take our kids). I have no idea what it cost but it was wonderful!
Sounds like a great getaway! I’m guilty of that too. If my husband mentions going out for a date night, but I know money is tight and we could use that money elsewhere (like clothes for the kids or shoes), then I drop the ball. But you’re right. We do need to trust our husbands.
We play World of Warcraft together, late at night when the Geeklets are asleep, and we find mutually interesting news / pop culture / nerdy stuff that we can geek out about together. 13 years married, 7 kids, and going strong… I love the sticky notes idea. I’m gonna write Post Its on my list. Great blog post!
Thanks, Eleanor! Those are great suggestions too!!
Eleanor, YES! I was going to totally post that. My husband and I played WoW for 7 years and that was our “date night” every night. Now we play Final Fantasy XIV. Sometimes we scroll through geeky thing and I lean on his shoulder (our PCs are side by side and he has the bigger monitor). We also watch a lot of shows together. We’ve been married 8 years of the 16 we’ve been together… but we have 2 kids.
p.s. My husband loves your term “geekltes!”
We are blessed enough to have family here, but my mom is not in the best of health and my mother in law works the weekends. So, we don’t really have the option to go out on dates very often. We make it a point to make sure we go to bed early enough every night to spend time together talking. We make sure my daughter is in the bed and my teenage boys are in their rooms so we can have our special time. This has become one of the best things for our marriage. This is the time that we talk about everything from what is going on in our lives, the kids lives, finances, and anything else that needs to be said. My husband truly is my best friend and we have always made sure that our marriage comes before anything else just as the Bible teaches. We love our kids and they are well taken care of but we know that our kids will be grown and out of the house before we know it, so we want to make sure that we are not strangers when that happens.
Such wisdom in your words, Becky. Thanks for sharing!! It is most important to make time for each other because one day the kids will have left the house.
I love this post!! We live in a tri-level house and our kids sleep upstairs so we spend some nights in the basements with a netflix movie and popcorn and a fire in the fireplace while kids are sleeping!! I love dating my husband!!! And some of these ideas will definitely help us keep it up! 🙂
I’m so glad you found it helpful! Thanks for stopping by, Whitney!!
I huge help when ours were young was trading childcare with another couple or two. It might take a little planning ahead, who is available, are you going to trade straight time (3 hours for 3 hours or are you going to do it per child/hour 3 hoursx3 kids= 9credits to trade later), feeding the kids: is the watcher feeding all the kids or are you going to send food. It was totally worth it to be able to go out on a “real date,” you know dinner where its served on real plates, once in a while.
That is a great idea, ElizaBeth! Thanks for stopping by and sharing!
We have recently read the same books and it has given us something to talk about.
Communication is key! Thanks for stopping by, Becky!
Laugh together. My hubby and I laugh together a lot. It’s really nice. Been together almost 10 years.
So true, Gen! Laughter is definitely important!!
We swap babysitting with friends bi monthly. We found we were using our babysitting to go to events, not dates.
We have had home date nights most of the way through with kids and have done most the suggestions. Our eldest is nearly 8. A really valuable prioroty! It is a challenge to keep them fresh. We have played board games, developed photo albums. Last year we bought a chiminea and have had evenings by the fire. I like the idea of an online cooking course. Something to research for this year!
Swapping babysitting is a great idea, Jacqui!
Wow.. This post couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I have neglected my husband so much this past year. I work full time and give whatever energy I have left, to my 5 yr old daughter. I really want this year to be more about “us”.
That is a great goal, Katy! It is so easy to neglect our husbands and put our children first. I’m definitely guilty of that. Let’s resolve to change that this year! It can be the year of our husbands :).
We play video games together when the kids are asleep. Right not it is Path of Exile which is like World of warcraft only free which is a plus. We also switch off with a neighbor I take her kids some nights and she takes mine and we don’t charge each other. we also DVR our favorite shows every night and watch a marathon on the one day off we have each week. I work 8-4 he works 3:30-12 plus he goes to college full time during the day so it is a struggle. I am going to do the text thing I think he will like that
Great ideas, Kristen! Thanks for sharing!! I love the swapping childcare idea!
These are such great ideas! We haven’t been on a date in so long because we can’t afford it and don’t have a sitter. It has really been affecting our relationship. I just found your blog through facebook by clicking on this post on someone elses feed. I love the name of your blog and your design!
Thank you, Salena! It is so easy to let money be our excuse. I am so guilty of that! But it does take a toll on your relationship. We need to fight for our marriages! Thanks for stopping by!!
For the past 27 years we put the kids to bed at 6pm on sundays, (we have 7) they had to stay in bed and read til lights out, as they got to be teens and young adults, they knew they are out of sight by 6. we have a steak dinner (cheaper than going out) and talk about the week or watch a movie. I am also learning, for you younger wives, something I wish i would of known. Husbands dont need to be shown love, they need to be shown respect. Check out Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs, reading it now and its a real eye opener, Its very important for a happy and healthy marriage. Blessings to you all.
Great advice! That is so true!! Thank you for sharing your wisdom!
We have a dessert date night and a movie date night. We use to do dinner too but our diet changed and finding a meal I can make once and cook two seperate times was difficult and we dropped that night. Byways, dessert night is fun because I make something special that is not everyday desserts. And movie night is so fun! We eat popcorn, drink kombucha and eat dessert from the other night! So much fun!
Love the idea of dessert and movie night! And kombucha. Yum!!
Hi there! I enjoyed reading your helpful article. I’m a member of the Happy Wives Club. Join us.
Great article! Thanks for sharing!! I’ll have to check out the Happy Wives Club. Thanks!
Grea article! We do date night every Friday, it’s on our calendar and we have to mutually agree to move it or do something with friends(like bunco or going to visit friends). We get creative, making homemade mozzarella together, playing video games, playing catch phrase with friends, having a pic-nik on our bed with the door closed is fun, gazing at the stars and talking over goals dreams and visions for the new year, watching (Netflix) our favorite comedians (Brian Regan & Tim Hawkins) laughing till it hurts, going to the shooting range and learning to shoot together has been one of the best things we have done! We have now taken shooting classes on the outdoor range (neither of of us had shot a gun prior to going to an indoor range and renting guns, we are hooked now!) Blessings!
Excellent ideas, Jenn! That is so great that you guys are able to have a date night every Friday!! It’s definitely important to schedule dates. If not, life tends to get in the way.
We put together a jar of things he likes to do and I like to do cut them in strips, folded them, and we alternate each of us picking one to do. We do whatever we pick whether we feel in the mood for it or not. it ranges from, give each other a massage, watch a movie of his choice/watch a movie of her choice, play a game of his/her choice, go for a walk, guitar lesson (my husband is bent on teaching me to play lol). this ensures we are both doing things we both like and never doing just what one person wants to. and it forces closeness making ourselves engage even if we aren’t feeling it.
The jar with date ideas is great! We may have to try that.
For my husbands birthday I created a year of dates for free to give him. We are on a tight budget that excludes restaurants and entertainment, but we need to keep our sanity. Last month we had a cookie baking Christmas movie watching marathon. The month before we created this rap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84hwYiB-tmo that was a ton of fun! This coming month we are having a camp out in our living room with tin foil dinners.
Haha!! LOVED the video, Dani! That was awesome!!
My husband and I go on “car dates” where we put a video on for the kids where they use head phones. We can turn the radio to our favorite tunes and rock out or talk, hold hands, laugh with each other. We can grab a $5 pizza and the whole clan is happy. This started when our oldest was a baby and we needed to get out of the house. Now it’s still a great solution for us seven years later.
That’s an awesome idea, Lucinda! Thanks for sharing!!
Wow some really great ideas in the post and in the comment. My hubby and I are also geeks, married going on 7 years with 4(and 1/2 ;P) kids it’s hard to find someone to watch all of our babies together and we don’t want to split them up (Safety in numbers) So we game together, and with our children, we also find mutually interesting games to play together in the evenings. One thing I might suggest that I don’t see anywhere else is watching free online educational videos such as those from TedTalks video or take a Coursera or Khan academy class together. Also a really big thing for us is finding interest in each other’s interests. Although our tastes don’t always agree we are usually willing to do something that may not be to our best tastes because we are enjoying it together with our spouse who loves it. I think enjoying the joy that the other takes in something is as great (or better) than your own enjoyment
I agree! There are some excellent ideas in the comments! I love your idea of “finding interest in each other’s interests.” That is so true! Thanks for sharing!!
I would like any suggestions for those of us who have husbands who have over-the-road jobs. I, personally, have not seen my husband since Thanksgiving and that was for 24 hours which was consumed by the holiday. We talk on the phone daily and that’s about it. ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?!?!
Skype, read or listen to the same book, make a special gift box that you slip in his suitcase that he can find and open once he is away either put in a gift or a note telling him what you plan on doing to him when he gets home, make him a playlist of song, start a notebook with a story have him write a line or paragraph while he is gone and you write one when he returns and just keep going back and forth let your imagination run wild, keep an I thought about you today journal and write down different times you thought about him and why then pack it with his things on the next trip…. It’s the little things!
Those are excellent ideas, Kimberly! Thanks for sharing!!
You could do the notebook thing online so it’s real time and each write something each day. Online trivia, chess, etc. I did a long distance relationship once and we did that kind of stuff. Even easier these days with smart phones.
That’s a great idea!!
It’s tough, Tracy. My FIL is a truck driver so he left my MIL with the kids at home while he traveled. I love Kimberly’s suggestions! Would writing notes and sticking them in different places in the truck or his luggage be possible? It would be a fun surprise for him knowing that you are thinking about him.