Making Time for Family: How You Can Spend Quality Time With Your Loved Ones

Modern life always seems to be increasingly busy and bustling with an endless list of things to do. At the end of the day, when you’ve finished work, walked and fed the dog, done the washing up and prepared lunch for the next day, it can feel as though there is no time for anything else. By the time the weekend rolls around, the temptation is to just sit down in front of the television, order in a takeaway, waiting for the next five days of work to start again. When our lives are this busy, spending time with our families is simultaneously both more difficult but even more important than ever. Quality time with the ones we love is a necessity, though. Therefore, here are some reasons why we should be making time for our loved ones and some fun ideas on how to make it possible, even if your kids are growing up and moving on.

Why Don’t We Spend Time With Our Families?

The first thing to think about is why you may not be spending your time with the family. In a recent report published in the UK, it has been found that we spend less than one hour a day with our families and that this is largely due to not being able to balance work and home life properly. The time we do spend together tends to be in front of the television and not engaging with one another. It follows logically then, that when our children have moved out, this becomes an even bigger difficulty. So, why does this need to change?

The Benefits Of Spending Quality Time With Your Family

We all know that our family life has a huge impact on our overall happiness and, when we don’t get enough proper time together, it can feel very isolating, with feelings of guilt about not making the time for those we hold most dear. There are many proven benefits of family time such as reducing your stress and promoting a healthier lifestyle. Quality time together has also been linked to making your children more confident, self-assured, and independent. These are traits we all wish to see in our kids, and so the benefits of putting aside more time each week to spend with your children will have a positive impact upon them for the entire duration of their lives.

Ways To Make Time For Younger Children

It is easy to find cheap, fun ways to not only entertain your young ones but to make meaningful memories with them. Looking online for inspiration on the best activities can be done on our phones on the commute from work; events can also be planned and booked for the weekend with minimal effort, with thanks to the click of a button. For example, how easy would it be to make a picnic with your children and go out to a local park for the day? An activity such as this means you can spend time preparing the food and playing with your children with the added bonus of getting fresh air and exercise.

It is amazing just how quickly our children will grow up, and so it is incredibly important to seize every opportunity we can to make the most of our limited time with them. The last thing we want is to look back and see time wasted that could’ve been spent making memories.

The Importance of Dinner

An easy way to make time for your family is to utilize something that you do every day and change up your routines to make the most of the time you do have. The most obvious way of doing this is to make your evening meal a family affair once more. Research shows the links between proper family dinners and positive attributes, such as higher academic performance and higher self-esteem, for example. So why not ditch the ready meal in the sitting room and instead get everyone to lend a hand to cooking up something fresh? Then you can all sit around the dining room table and catch up on everyone’s day. This will help your family offload their stress after the long days by being able to talk about it in a supportive environment. 

The great thing about family dinners is that it is a good way to keep family ties as your kids start to fly the nest. Making meals an important part of your families schedule means that when they move away, it will be easy to meet up with them regularly as you will have established a strong and positive family tradition. 

Going The Extra Mile 

Raising a family gives you the gift of many wonderful memories to treasure forever. Putting in the extra effort to afford you and your loved ones new experiences can be beneficial for bringing you all closer together. Aside from doing the everyday things, going above and beyond to spend extra special time with the ones you love is a great way to strengthen family bonds.

This is easier to achieve than you may think. Going the extra mile doesn’t have to mean spending a whole paycheck to splash out on a vacation as there are plenty of fun activities for families to do right on your doorstep. For example, trying out the Pittsburgh Escape Room is an exciting evening out where you and your family can play together and solve puzzles within a unique storyline.

By making an effort to get all the family out together, you are showing them that you’re dedicated to making them feel special, investing both time and money in getting to know them better.

Whether you have a young family or your children have flown the nest, there are lots of easy ways to have quality time together, be it gathering around to play a game or going for an evening out trying something new and interesting, making memories together is the most important thing.