How to Have Energy for Hobbies After Kids Go to Bed: Real Tips for Exhausted Parents
It’s 8:17 pm, both kids are finally down for the night, and I’m leaning against the hallway wall, one hand on the light switch, a crumb of cheddar goldfish stuck to the thigh of my faded sweatpants. Three months ago, for my birthday, my sister got me a nice watercolor set I’d been eyeing. It’s sitting propped open on the dining table right now, next to a stack of school permission slips and a half-eaten granola bar that’s been there since Tuesday. I’ve been meaning to get to it for two hours. I can barely make myself move from the wall. I end up sliding down to the carpet, scrolling Instagram for 45 minutes looking at other parents posting their latest knit scarves and garden harvests, wondering how the hell they have energy for this. By the time I close my phone, it’s 9 pm, I’m still a zombie, and I drag myself to bed. I know I’m not the only one.
I brought this up to my friend Lila at the playground last week. She brings cut peonies from her own garden to share with the kids’ teachers every spring, and she’s already planted three raised beds this year. When I asked her how she pulls it off—how she has energy for a hobby after two kids under 8 go to bed—she laughed and sat down on the dirt next to my bench, wiping playground sand off her jeans. She said she used to be me, too. She’d spend all day herding kids, wait till they went down, tell herself she’d garden for an hour, then end up face down on the couch watching old TikTok compilations and falling asleep before 9. It took her a year to figure out she was asking the wrong question. It wasn’t how to get more energy after kids went to bed. It was how to stop expecting all her hobby time to happen after kids went to bed, when she had none left.
She told me her first trick, and it was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. She keeps a tray of succulent cuttings on her kitchen windowsill, right next to the toaster. She doesn’t save all gardening for weekends or after bedtime. While she’s waiting for pasta to boil after school, or for the kids to finish their breakfast, she’ll spend three minutes trimming a cutting and repotting it. That counts. She doesn’t need a full hour. It’s just three minutes of something that’s hers, not anyone else’s. The second trick: she leaves everything she needs for her bigger gardening projects out by the back door. She doesn’t pack up her pruning shears and plant labels and put them back in the garage every time. That 10 minutes of digging through boxes for supplies is enough to drain what little energy she has left. If it’s already out, she can step out for 5 minutes after dinner if she feels like it, and that’s it.
I went home and tried this with my watercolors, and it changed everything. I used to tuck the whole set away in a box under the guest bed after every use, because I hated clutter on the dining table. I dragged it out a week later and left it propped open on the corner, palette already squeezed with the colors I use most, brush resting right on the edge of the pad. It doesn’t bother anyone, it just takes up a foot of table space. Then I started setting my alarm 12 minutes earlier— I tried 15, that was too much, 12 works perfectly—before the kids get up. The house is still quiet, my coffee is still hot, and I paint one tiny thing: a leaf, a coffee mug, a cloud outside the window. That’s it. I don’t try to finish a whole painting. I just do that one tiny thing, and then I start getting breakfast ready.
Here’s the thing I didn’t get before, that makes all of this make sense. Parenting uses up your executive function all day long, every single day. It’s not just that you’re physically tired from tying shoes and picking up toys. Every tiny decision—what to pack for lunch, did we remember the soccer cleats, why is this one crying because the toast was cut the wrong way, how do I explain fractions to a second grader—eats away at the part of your brain that lets you focus on something creative or leisurely. By the time kids go to bed, that part of your brain is empty. You’re a zombie not because you’re lazy or unmotivated, you’re a zombie because you already used all your energy on the people who need you that day. That’s not a failure. That’s just how being a parent works.
I still don’t paint for a full hour after kids go to bed most nights. Most nights, I’m still that zombie leaning against the hallway wall, ready to crash before 9. If I do have 5 minutes of energy left, though, I don’t have to drag everything out and set it all up. It’s already there, waiting for me. Some weeks, I only get 20 minutes of painting total, spread out over 5 different days. That’s 20 minutes more than I had when I was waiting for that big block of free time after kids went to bed that never actually comes.
Last night, after kids went down, I was so tired I almost fell asleep sitting at the table clearing off dinner. I walked past my half-painted sunflower, propped open in the corner, and I stopped. I picked up the brush, added a little streak of yellow to the edge of one petal, and wiped my brush off on the paper towel. That was it. I turned off the light and went to bed. It’s not a masterpiece. I’m not going to post it anywhere. But it’s mine. Some nights I’m still a zombie. Some weeks I don’t touch the paints at all. This works for me right now, and that’s enough. I’m not in a rush to finish anything, anyway.
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