How to Survive Working Opposite Shifts with Your Spouse

Working opposite shifts can be hard. Especially while you’re still adjusting to a new schedule.

Days can go by without seeing each other awake. That’s rough.

But it’s necessary if your jobs require you to work at certain times of the day.

So here are a few ways my husband and I make the most of working on different schedules.

{ This post was sponsored by Tai Pei and all opinions expressed in my post are my own. }

Make the most of the time you DO have together

This probably goes without saying. But you’d be surprised how many times B gets home from work at 8:00pm, quickly says hi, then retreats to his man cave to play video games.

And before you’re like “omg why would he do that?” sometimes I have stuff I’m working on or a show he doesn’t want to watch.

So it can be easy to be stuck in the doing-your-own-thing mindset because you’re just not used to him being there.

You may have to remind yourself to spend time together.

Watch a movie together or get into a tv series together. Talk about your day. Just spend quality time together (especially if your kid is sleeping!)

If your little one is awake, have family time. We so rarely have family time that I set a rule of no video games while Toot’s awake.

Take a staycation together

If you have vacation time to take from work, take it together! You can just stay home if you have nowhere to go.

It’s nice to just be home with the whole family.

On our last staycation, we both took a week off. We spent most of the week at home, but we did take a two-day trip to St. Louis which is only a little over an hour away.

Communicate throughout the day

We text each other throughout the day. Both of our jobs are pretty lax about having cell phones during the day.

If your job doesn’t allow you to quickly text your spouse, consider calling or texting on a break or during your “lunch” time.

You don’t have to have full on conversations each time. Sometimes we just send a quick “I love you.” And by quick, I mean we’ve gotten efficiency down so we just text or say “Love” to each other. lol.

Send funny gifs or memes. Videos or music are good, too, but your spouse may not be able to listen to them at work.

Snapchat is also a fun way to quickly communicate. I send him way too many filtered faces, though! lol

Surprise each other by doing a household chore

Once my husband texted me while I was at work and he was home. He wanted me to do the dishes and clean the kitchen. So I said I would. I wasn’t happy about it, but who wants to do the dishes?

So I got home and to my surprise, the dishes were already done and the kitchen was clean!

I texted him and he said, “I got you!” He had already cleaned it when he asked me to do it. He just wanted me to be surprised.

Leave little notes for each other

You can leave notes for each other on the fridge, on the bathroom mirror, on the back door, or anywhere you’ll be able to find them. Sometimes my husband leaves them on my laptop, and I leave them on the remote. You can tell how technology dependent we are.

The notes can be useful such as “remember to put the trash on the curb” or just fun like an inside joke.

When you’re working opposite shifts, notes are an important form of communication because they can’t be deleted or lost in your text conversations.

Have mommy days and daddy days

If you’re just transitioning to opposite shifts, you’ll need to explain it to your kids. We explained it to Toot with mommy days and daddy days.

Toot understands that she has the morning with daddy, the afternoon with grandma, and the evening with mommy on most days of the week.

But one day a week she has a mommy day and one day is a daddy day. These are our days off during the week. So she’ll spend the majority of the day with one of us.

Talk to your kids about why both of you aren’t there at the same time.

One of Toot’s favorite things to say is “Daddy’s working!” and “Mommy’s working!” She also just thinks if anyone isn’t there, they’re working.

We couldn’t find the cat once, and she said: “Kitty’s working!”

Stock up on single serve meals

You probably won’t be able to have too many meals together. We survive on single serve meals now.

Tai Pei is our favorite! They’re so convenient and easy to make. You take it out of the freezer and put the entire thing in the microwave!

They’re the best tasting frozen entrees I’ve ever had. And they have a great range of flavors so there are at least 4 or 5 that both of us like.

Plus, they’re made with real, pure ingredients, and no preservatives or artificial ingredients. So no bad stuff. Just deliciousness! They taste just like fresh Asian food.

So when I bought them, I thought I’d have to buy rice to go with it because that’s what you have to do with the other Asian frozen food. Nope! Tai Pei entrees have infused rice, and omg it’s seriously amazing.

I’m not one to eat all of the extra veggies and stuff in Asian food, but I ate the new Tai Pei Chicken Fried Rice entree ENTIRELY. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before with any other brand.

I like to take them to work for lunch, while B likes to have them while he’s home.

It just doesn’t make sense for either of us to make a meal for two people when we don’t eat together very often.

So keeping a big stock of single serve entrees is essential for us.

If you’d like to try Tai Pei single serve entrees, here’s a coupon to save $1.00 on ONE (1) Tai Pei® Entrée (7.9 oz. or larger) or Appetizer! 

How do you survive working opposite shifts?

Let me know in the comments below!

I know it’s rough, and no one really planned to have work times that don’t cooperate with each other.

Hopefully, your whole careers won’t be like this and it’s just a part of life that you’ll have to get through together!

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