At roughly that age, or maybe earlier, my parents wrote out labels describing every piece of furniture or object in our apartment. Everything, walls, door knobs, book titles and so on.

You know how some people are really good at puzzles and some people just spatially are clueless as far as isolating matching pieces? I'm convinced that in large part comes from early childhood exposure to puzzles. My parents always left puzzles lying around that had maps on them, or facts, or some sort of writing in general. Same with books, brain games, etc.

Obviously some of that applies to age 1.5 and some to ages 5-10, but the idea is -- parent even when not physically present. Let your daughter learn on her own when you and your wife are working. Might foster independence, love of knowledge, could solve the problem of you not being able to teach at all the times she's receptive of information. At the very least she'll have an understanding not commensurate with her age of things like draperies and floorboards. Paint swatches. Bed frames.