Making the Most of a Day Off When You Have Kids

Decide first whether it is a day off with the kids or a day off from them, because the two need opposite plans. A day with them wants structure, food and a hard stop. A day without them wants one good thing booked and everything else left well alone. The way to waste either is to treat it as spare time.

The other thing to settle early is that a day off is not a day for jobs. Every job you put in it eats twice its own length, because you spend the morning dreading it.

Say What the Day Is For

Out loud, to whoever you live with, the night before. "Tomorrow is a day out, we are leaving at ten, and the kitchen can wait." That one sentence prevents about six arguments.

Otherwise the day quietly turns into admin. Nobody decides that, it just happens, and by two o'clock you have done a shop and two loads of washing and lost the thing you were looking forward to.

What It Costs

The biggest cost is rarely the money, it is the childcare, and an honest budget for a day off includes both of them.

• Ask early. A grandparent, a sibling or a friend will nearly always say yes to three weeks' notice and often cannot manage three days'. Name the day too: a Dreamworx afternoon is easier to say yes to than a Saturday you have not decided yet.
• Swap rather than pay where you can. Take somebody's two for an afternoon and get an afternoon back. It costs nothing and it makes asking a second time much easier.
• If you are paying for it, put it in the budget for the day rather than pretending it sits somewhere else. It is part of the cost, and it is usually worth it.

Whatever you spend, spend it on the whole thing working. A day where one of you is doing pick-up arithmetic in your head is not a day off for that person.

If the Kids Are Coming

Pick one thing and build the day around it, with food before it rather than during it. Hungry is what turns a good afternoon, and most of the meltdowns that get blamed on the activity are really about lunch happening at half two.

Go earlier than everybody else. The first hour anywhere is calm, and the same place at one o'clock is a different and considerably worse experience.

Then have a hard end time and say it out loud in advance. Something that finishes while everyone is still enjoying it gets remembered as brilliant. The same day half an hour longer gets remembered as the one where everybody cried.

If the Kids Are Not Coming

Book something. That is the entire advice. An unbooked free day gets spent on the house every single time, and then you have nothing to show for the favour you called in.

Put a start time on it and get out of the door before you can find something to tidy. The first twenty minutes are the hard part and everything after them is easy.

Do not use the day to catch up on sleep either, unless sleep genuinely is the thing you want most. A nap is fine. Eleven until one in bed is the day gone.

Getting Out of the House

Do the leaving properly. Bags by the door the night before, everyone dressed before breakfast, and one person in charge of the departure rather than both of you assuming the other has it in hand.

If you are handing over to a grandparent, hand over once, in one go, and then leave. Standing in the hall for twenty minutes explaining the routine makes it harder for everybody, the kids included.

Afternoons Beat Evenings Now

An afternoon works better than a night out when there are kids in the house, and not only because of the babysitting. You get home at a reasonable hour, you sleep, and you are a functioning parent by morning, which is the real price of a late one.

It is why daytime clubbing suits this stage of life so well, and why a Dreamworx afternoon at Digital lands better now than a night out does. Out in the afternoon, home in the evening, and the Sunday is still yours.

Protect the Landing

Leave the last hour of the day empty, whichever version you did. No jobs at the end, nothing that needs organising, nothing you have promised somebody for the morning.

Get the bags in, sit down and let it finish. A day off that ends in twenty minutes of tidying does not feel like a day off, however good the middle of it was.

Pay the Favour Back Quickly

Whoever had the kids, get a date in the diary to return it inside the month. It is fair, and it makes the next ask a great deal easier.

Then book yours. If you wait for the next free Saturday to appear on its own, you will be waiting until Christmas.