Cheap Date Nights: How to Make Them Happen

Can I get a show of hands for how many of you do not have family near by? I’m raising two hands over here. We have one set of family in Indiana. The other set is in Florida. And we are in Texas! It makes cheap date nights nearly impossible.

So one of my intentions for the new year is to figure out how to get regular, cheap dates back into my life.

When Henry was born, we lived in Houston. I had several friends from my prenatal yoga class with children around the same age. We started a babysitting collective, and it was awesome! We made little “tokens,” which were worth one hour of babysitting. If you had tokens available, you could cash them in with anyone in the collective.

This time around, my plan is to connect with just one other family and alternate each month. Maybe Fridays from 5pm-8pm? That way, we could just include two other kids in our Friday night movie ritual when it was our turn to babysit?

We would do this with the one family we spend time the most time with during COVID. Everyone would wear masks and stay six feet apart from each other. (It’s no less safe than school is right now!)

I think I would set up recurring calendar invites so the spot is secured. Then, as it gets closer, we can make adjustments based on people’s actual schedules.

I’m not really sure what Matt and I would do on a COVID date! The weather is really hit or miss in Austin in the Fall and Winter. We might luck out and get warm weather. In that case, we could have a take-out picnic. If it’s cold, maybe we would go for a walk around the lake and eat take-out in our car? We could put the seats down in our Honda Fit and spread out a picnic blanket in there! We could also go for a hike or a bike ride—both of which are less fun with our children!

Oh, I just realized we could just hang out at home because our kids wouldn’t be here. Woo-hoo! That could be a lot of fun. Homemade pizza night? Homemade pasta night? Matt and I are homebodies, so that could totally work. 2021, here we come!