What services would make the most difference in the life of exhausted parents?

[Anonymous]

Hey there,

I am curious to find out what parents are willing to splurge on in exchange for more sanity, me-time, in their life. I am looking to offer services that would make a difference in a parent’s life and would love to hear from parents! 😍

[Anonymous]

Clean my kitchen after the breakfast rush.

Laundry for the whole family.

Meal planning, food prep, dinner cleanup.

Hard to find a model that works that’s not a full time employee or two. No one wants to come to work for just 2 hours a day. Most parents I know would splurge but only for 2-10 hours a week. Maybe some sort of rotating service like a cleaning service that comes in one day a week but you rotate the days among a bunch of families? You can see why it’s a tough business model.

[Anonymous]

Date night sitters are a godsend. Not an original/unconventional idea, to be sure, but we love ours.

Sitters who will watch a mildly sick kid on workdays are also a wonderful resource.

[Anonymous]

Adding: I'm not at this stage of parenting yet but after-school sitters/nannies are VERY sought-after, especially ones who drive. Same with summer nannies for school-aged kids.

And all parents hate the daily admin tasks so maybe an affordable version of a "household manager" who is basically the administrative assistant keeping track of things.

[Anonymous]

If there was an easy button to push for when I was up all night with a teething infant but still need to get out of bed, get everyone out and get to the office.

On days like that if someone could magically show up at 6 AM and get everyone moving it would make such a difference.

[Anonymous]

I had a 14 year old who came to my house before I got home from work with the kids. She would start dinner (pasta water or prep food or preheat the oven), set the table, fold my laundry and be there to play with the kids until I got dinner on the table. She stayed and ate with the kids, then when DH got home, we had time to eat together and relax a little. These were during the daycare/preschool years.

[Anonymous]

Take things off my plate and do them outside my house - ironing, folding laundry, fixing things, dry cleaner, post office, maybe some organizing if it can be done elsewhere. I'd love to have a unicorn housekeeper person, but I don't want to deal with someone in my house.

[Anonymous]

OP here, Thank you all for your replies. This is really helpful - would love to know how much you'd be willing to pay if someone for example offered the following services (10 hours per week):
1. Laundry Folding
2. Travel arrangements (maybe even a travel chaperone for your child)
3. On-call childcare, got a sick child, can't miss an important meeting? She's there to fill in.
4. Running errands, grocery shopping, scheduling doc, and service appointments, prepping meals for the week, researching customized child activities (summer camp, speech therapists), basically personal assistant
5. Fill in the blanks with other things needed.

[Anonymous]

I’ve always wanted a concierge/home manager to take on the burden of maintaining my home and property, someone who makes sure all maintenance and repairs are taken care of in a timely fashion by qualified professionals. I don’t have to figure out when to replace my water heater, get quotes for painting my picket fence, find someone to repair my brick stoop, figure out who to call to re-grout my shower, stay home to let the plumber in, my fireplace is ready to be used at all times. The person scheduling all of this speaks the lingo and knows about home maintenance, so they weed out the repair people who are suggesting unnecessary repairs or inflating the cost, and they have the contacts to know who to hire in the first place to get the job done right. They’d be the one to play bad cop if things go south. I only have to deal with this one person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey there,

I am curious to find out what parents are willing to splurge on in exchange for more sanity, me-time, in their life. I am looking to offer services that would make a difference in a parent’s life and would love to hear from parents! 😍

like the first poster- a "char" woman. Someone who came in to do the straightening up, clean up dishes, take out garbage, wipe down surfaces, make beds, do floors, shift wet laundry into dryer and then leave and come back to do this tedious work again the next day. It would work if this person did 3-4 clients in the same neighborhood just like they used to do when one didn't have other job opportunities. Just 2-3 hours a day. That would be the dream. maybe even fold the laundry somedays.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in a developing country and we had several household helpers who came in for a few hours/ day.
One person to sweep and mop the floors, dust and do laundry.
Another to help in the kitchen with cooking and do dishes.
These two worked at other homes too, a few hours per day.
A driver, who was a full time employee who'd drive my dad to work, us to school and back, and to any classes/ after school activities. In between during the work day he'd run errands as needed - ie pick up groceries/ dry cleaning or whatever.

All this in a very middle class household. I miss it!
For life here, I'd add in a manager who could do jobs like keeping track of all the kid tasks - lessons, camps, doctor and dentist visits, school forms, etc.

[Anonymous]

Someone to help in the morning and evening hours. So it's really hard, because outside of regular business hours, that's expensive.

[Anonymous]

After school driver.

[Anonymous]

So I would pay about $25/hr for this, with a fairly big caveat: I would not take on the extra administrative work of employing someone, doing their payroll taxes, etc. I would only pay for this work to someone with an LLC.

[Anonymous]

I could use someone to hang out with my kid and play video games/monitor and discuss YouTube. Twice a week.