Yesterday I wrote about how our mornings were shifting. Today, it’s on to the other side of the day.

I was definitely looking to refine our household evening schedules. The older kids are not exactly looking to go to bed early. If screens are an option, it’s hard to get people to do other things (like read). Because I have older kids, my youngest child in particular had a hard time going down while everyone else was up and about the house. That meant that I felt like I had very little downtime after he went to bed (or after the others went to bed, for that matter).

Last year I had enforced an “In room with no devices time” of 9 p.m. I’d go around and turn out lights at 10 p.m….if I wasn’t still dealing with the 4-year-old, whose bedtime can be long and involved. As parents of older kids have probably experienced themselves, sometimes when I went in to turn people’s lights out, they’d decide this was the perfect time to talk to me and…

Since the high school now starts an hour later (8:30 a.m. vs. 7:30 a.m. this year) I had visions of everyone’s bedtimes drifting later and later and I was not excited about that. So I decided that the official “In room with no devices time” would move back to 8:30 p.m.

There was actually not too much resistance to this, which I am grateful for. I think it helps that the older kids can still have their (school) laptops to do homework, so they can play music and honestly could be on (limited parts of) the web if they wanted to — they just aren’t texting their friends or watching YouTube. The older boys also have a fair amount of homework (and college applications!) so if they go to bed around 10:30 p.m., the 8:30 p.m. in room time gives them a reasonable two hours for work (and shower), which they kind of need.

Because everyone is up in their rooms, I can have the 4-year-old in his room at 8:30 p.m. I know that sounds late for a little guy, but he doesn’t have to be up in the morning until 8:15 a.m. and some number of days he actually sleeps until then! We go up, sometimes take a bath, read stories, and he is usually in his bed before 9 p.m. Unfortunately, I often still have to sit in there for a while, but he is asleep somewhere between 9-9:30 p.m. (if it is taking a while he has started to allow me to leave while he plays with toys in his bed…and then I just come check that he’s fallen asleep later). As soon as he is asleep, I go around and say goodnight to the big kids, have quick chats, but I don’t turn off their lights. They can deal with that on their own. Since there are no phones/ipads/Nintendo switches they will not stay up all night.

The only one who’s had some struggles with this is the 9-year-old. He’s not been a huge fan of independent reading. He’ll do art in his room, or quietly (sort of quietly) play with toys. And my husband has been reading Harry Potter out loud to him during this window. But my husband doesn’t exactly want to read to him for 90 minutes so this is something of a work in progress. We’ve been trying all sorts of books to entice him toward independent reading. One surprise hit was an Oahu guidebook, so go figure. I’m hoping he’ll build the habit over time.

But in the meantime, I’ve been a fan of this new routine. One complication: If I am not home at 8:30…it doesn’t always happen. Yes, this is a source of frustration. But I have been working on some solutions to this — it turns out kids can be good enforcers of their siblings following the rules!

That is the topic of this week’s Best of Both Worlds episode. Sarah was given some leeway to choose her clinic days next year, so this sparked a whole discussion of what the ideal part-time schedule would be. If you’re going to work 3 days a week, which should they be? Or if you’re going to work 20-30 hours in a job, when would it be best to log those? A lot of organizations have landed on a hybrid schedule of being in the office three days a week and working at home 2 days. If you have a choice, which days should you choose to work from home?

There’s no one right answer for everyone, but we suggest some things to think about. We also suggest creating a “realistic ideal week” template for thinking this through.

Please give the episode a listen. And please consider joining our Patreon community where we discuss this and other topics!

My current working schedule tends to be mostly 8:15-4:15 or so, with some days ending a little earlier and some a little later based on the driving schedule. Add in breaks and various other responsibilities and it tends to come out around 35 hours a week.

On the other hand, there are downsides, too. Because it’s almost impossible to actually take a day off — you can’t put in for vacation and then ask your co-workers to cover for you. So on days like today, I become a nap time warrior. I made a prioritized list of things that 100% Must Be Done Today. As soon as Sam started rubbing his eyes at 12:45, I was off to the races. This blog post was pretty low down the list, given that it is 2:45 and he’s going to be up any minute.

This would drive me nuts to try to work like this most days (with a swing shift from 9-11PM too, I imagine), though I know people who do it. This is how some folks manage to put in a 20-25 hour workweek with no childcare whatsoever. But even if you do have childcare (and we usually do) it’s always a good exercise to think through in the context of prioritizing our work days. If you only had two hours to work — either because you’re home with pre-school aged kids, or you’ve got an all-day meeting coming up, or are leaving on vacation — what would you choose to do? How quickly could you zoom through the list?

Perhaps more tellingly, what would fall off the list? Could this fall off forever? Or would it just fall off because it’s not urgent (even if it is important)? What would you do on a 2-hour workday?