The inconvenience of location, location, location

[GibsonGirl128]

My BF and I are starting to realize now after 4 and a half months that it's really fucking inconvenient for either one of us to overnight at the other's place on worknights.

I live in the southwest part of the city. It's still in the city, but it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. It's not a great part of town, and there's nothing to do here, so every time we want to go somewhere (dinner, entertainment, etc.), we're driving to his area anyway. He lives in the northeast part of town. This is where the majority of his jobs are, northwest and northeast (as a sales and service tech, he drives all over to clients' homes. He spends roughly $800 a month on gas). It's about a 30 minute drive between our places, so that means when he stays at my place, he's adding at least a half hour or more to where his first AM call is, and wasting more gas, and having to leave even earlier because of what time rush hour starts in my area.

But when I stay at his apartment, it's a crunch. He and a roommate are in about 800 sq ft, with one bathroom, and all 3 of us have to be at work at roughly the same time in the mornings. So even though I'm actually a little closer to work, I have to get up earlier at his place than at my own to be able to get showered, etc, so they can also get ready. And their place is packed...as in, there's so much stuff that I usually have to move things around just to be able to put my bag somewhere that someone won't stumble over it in the middle of the night. I kind of have to rig up a place to do my hair and finish getting ready, because there isn't any place where there's counter space, an outlet, and a mirror all within reach of each other, and I can't finish getting ready in the bathroom unless I want to get up at the crack of goddamn dawn and then have an hour to sit and wait, doing nothing, before I have to be at work, because 2 other people need to get in there after me.

I have a house and have tons of summer projects going on that I can't just slack off on, and I have 2 cats that I can't just leave all the time (one with medical issues). But when he's here, he's not getting his own stuff done, either.

I know there's really no way of fixing this issue, which is frustrating. Driving all the way to the other's house and not spending the night just sucks, because we obviously get stuck in a rut of staying up way later than we should just so we don't have to leave the other so soon (I don't even get off work till 6, so it's at least 6:30 by the time I see him; leaving by 10 barely gives us enough time to make dinner and watch a little tv before the other one would have to leave.) Not to mention, he has his kids every other weekend, and also works every other Saturday when he doesn't have them, so not spending the night during the week would give us only 2 nights a month together if we didn't overnight during the week.

Does anyone else run into problems like this? How do you make things easier? (And no, the appropriate answer is not "move in together", lol)