50 Inexpensive At-Home Date Night Ideas
Derek and I hardly ever go on dates outside of our house. It's typically really hard to find people who are willing to watch our kids, and when we do, we feel like we need to rush the date and get home as soon as possible. There is also the fact that you have to pay a babysitter, which I'm not opposed to doing, it's just for more reasons than one, a lot easier for us to have at-home dates instead of leaving the house.
With coronavirus still in full swing and people not really knowing when it will be completely okay for them to have a babysitter come over, and to actually leave and go on a date, I thought I'd share 50 at-home date night ideas for you to utilize during this time at home, and beyond. Pretty much all of these ideas involve ordering in, or going and getting take-out as step one, unless otherwise mentioned.
- Dinner and a Movie
- Card Games: Some of our favorites are Uno, Phase 10, Spit, and Rook.
- iPad Games: Download a bunch of games on your phone or iPad and have fun playing them back and forth with one another. Some of our favorites are hangman, connect four, bowling, and the dot game.
- Backyard Fire: These don't need to be expensive. You can gather a bunch of bricks and stack them in a circle, or buy an inexpensive one for $30-$50. Roast s'mores or hotdogs, and cuddle after you put the kids to bed!
- Play Board Games: Some of our favorites are Scattagories, Boggle, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Risk.
- Make Dinner Together: Make a new recipe that you typically wouldn't make for your kids
- Make Dessert Together: Already ate dinner with the kids? Once they're in bed make dessert and turn on a movie!
- Play Question and Answers: Look up a bunch of random questions online, and take turns going back and forth answering them. This could be great if you have a spouse who isn't very chatty.
- Have a Backyard Picnic: Get food to go, or make something in the kitchen, and hangout on a blanket in the backyard and eat together!
- Paint Night: Find a painting video on youtube, and then go out and get the supplies you need to make it happen. Dollar Tree has a lot of paint supplies, along with Michael's. Don't forget your coupons!
- Watch a Movie Outside: If you have a projector you can setup a sheet and your favorite movie and watch outside when it gets dark!
- Lay Out in the Hammock and Watch the Stars
- Have a Food/Drink Tasting Night: Get a few fancy root beers, or cookies from different cookie shops, or different cheeses or meats, and sample each one and talk about which ones were your favorites and why.
- Listen to a Podcast: Follow up with discussing what you liked and what you didn't
- Have a Video Game Night: We have the Super Nintendo with all the old games pre-loaded on it! It would be fun to see who can beat who at the old school games!
- Have a Fondue Night
- Have a Bookclub for Two: Get two copies of a book, read them separately, and then discuss what you liked and what you didn't on your date night.
- Have a Living Room Campout: Bring the sleeping bags inside, make s'mores, and even turn on the fireplace for a little ambiance.
- Have a Snowy Night Party: If there is snow outside, put the kids to bed, make a snowman together, have a snowball fight, and when it gets too cold, come inside and have hot cocoa by the fire and warm up to a movie!
- Play Twister!
- Plant a Garden: Always want to plant a garden but haven't gotten around to it? Make it into a fun date night!
- Have a Spa Night: You can do some facial masks, get rid of those nose hairs, and even throw in a massage if you want!
- Do a Workout Together: Hit up Youtube for some workout videos, and then make a healthy dinner or do some meal prep together afterwards!
- Pull out the Photo Albums: Take out your old photo albums and look through all the pictures together.
- Plan a trip: Pull out your computers and each take 30 minutes planning your dream vacation, and then share your ideas with your spouse. Even if you don't take the trip, its still fun to see what each of you come up with!
- Assemble a Puzzle Together: Get a fun puzzle off of Amazon and spend the night putting it together!
- Tackle a Home Improvement Project: Paint a room or lay some new floors (make sure it's relatively small and easy so that you can finish it in a night and feel good about yourselves)!
- Play card Games
- Paint Mugs and Plates: There is a place in Utah called Color Me Mine, where people paint pottery for date nights. You could easily recreate this from the comfort of your home.
- Play Yard Games Together: There are so many fun options like Corn Hole, Ladder Golf, Kan Jam, Spike Ball, or even make an oversized yard game like Jenga!
- Get Dressed up for a Fancy Dinner: Put on a nice dress with full hair and makeup, and have you husband get in a suit and tie, and have a nice candlelit dinner at home!
- Learn a TikTok Dance: You don't have to actually post it, but we all know this would cause plenty of fun and laughter.
- Bake a Fancy Cake Together: Hone in your cake decorating skills and try to make a great tasting and beautifully looking cake. Cakes by Courtney has tons of tips and amazing recipes.
- Have an Ice Cream Sundae Competition: Who can make the best looking, and best tasting sundae? Get all the fixings at the store and find out!
- Do Yoga Together: Similar to doing a workout, but a lot less sweat.
- Binge a Season of your Favorite Show: Some of our favorites are The Office, Brooklyn 99, Friends, and Seinfeld.
- Have a Dessert Only Dinner: Get a bunch of your favorite treats and watch a movie while you eat. Turns out when your the adult you don't have to have your real dinner first.
- Watch the Sunrise/Sunset: Wake up early, or stay up late, and watch the sun come up or go down together.
- At Home Escape Room: There are tons of escape room games on amazon that you can purchase so you don't have to make up your own, and will be a lot more fun and challenging than a normal board game!
- Guess the Food: Pick a bunch of foods from your pantry/fridge. Blindfold your spouse and see if they can guess each food.
- Get Crafty with the Kids Art Supplies: Pull out all your kids supplies and see who can make the best... anything.
- Learn a New Game: Grab a new game you've never played before and figure it out together
- Try Deep Frying Everything: Look through your pantry and try deep frying things, oreos, chocolate, string cheese, etc..
- Take Online Personality Tests
- At-Home Prom Night: Dress up for prom and play all the best songs from the year you graduated high school.
- Watch a Comedy Show Online
- Tie-Dye T-Shirts: Tie-dye is making a huge comeback right now anyways. Get some white shirts, and a tie-dye kit and make a night of it!
- Backyard Olympics: If you're competitive The Creative Bite has a ton of backyard gamesyou can play. Compete against your spouse and see who is the winner!
- Take French Lessons: It is the language of love after all ;)
- Make Pottery Together: Mold some clay or try one of these pottery wheel kits for kids, and see what you can come up with!
Do you have any fun at-home date night ideas that you love? I'd love to hear them in the comments below!