how much are you willing to outsource?

[Anonymous]

My mentor at work has three children and I really look up to her because (as far as i can tell) she does a good job of finding a work/life balance. I got a chance to casually ask her if she has any tips for working moms and she bluntly said "I throw money at every single problem I can. House cleaning, grocery & dry clean delivery, landscape contract, i don't make cookies i buy them, i don't go to class parties but i get pizzas delivered to them, i pay a concierge fee at the doctors to have preference, i pay 7.99 to have a button sewed on my jacket instead of taking 20 minutes to do it, I pay anyone anything to save time." It was so direct and matter of fact I was kind of stunned but Ive been thinking about it for a few hours and I can't help but thing she's right. How much of my life am I willing to outsource to make it so I have two things to do in life 1.) work 2.) raise my kids. Interesting food for thought. I personally think I am going to add a housecleaner (already have a landscaper).

[Anonymous]

That's pretty much what i do. When I cook with dd it's to do a fun activity, not to get dinner on the table. If our nanny doesn't prep dinner we have a meal delivery service or go out to eat.

[Anonymous]

We do: house cleaning service 1x a week, meal/food delivery, and yes, I'll pay to have a button fixed on my jacket or a pair of pants hemmed rather than do it myself. My time = money, and if paying someone to clean the bathrooms once a week means it frees up some of my time to hang out with the family, then sure, I'll do it. There are some things I prefer to do myself (like baking cookies, going to class parties) but, like PP, that's usually because it's a fun activity to do with the kids.

[Anonymous]

My time is worth more than my money, I'd say, so unless I really enjoy what I'm doing OR I feel it is important that it is home-made/hand-made, I am willing to outsource. So for me, cleaning gets outsourced without any hesitation. I am also happy to have groceries delivered often. I like to prepare food myself for the family or go to places where I feel the ingredients are quality. I also want to get to know my child's classroom community, so stay involved as much as I can manage.

[Anonymous]

yes! I have ONE child (and a job), but I outsource, outsource, outsource. I have difficulty finding decent food that I don't cook myself; so I do a fair amount of cooking (supplemented with takeout). and I go to school things because I think being a part of that is important to DD.

I pay a dogwalker, maid service, delivery services of all sorts, hire a handyman even for things we COULD do, and otherwise throw money at life's little annoyances. I buy pretty much everything except food via Amazon. Most food I get via Peapod. The trade off is supposed to be more time with my daughter! So, I outsource that as little as possible, given that we both work fulltime and DH travels a lot.

[Anonymous]

House cleaning service every other week, daycare part-time, send out our laundry, have someone take care of our lawn/pool.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes it is not worth managing all these people who dont have the same standards I have.

[Anonymous]

We have a nanny to avoid having two pick up/drop offs (oldest is in school) so that is one way we are adding an expense (vs. daycare I suppose). I like picking out my own groceries so we don't outsource that, but we do have a housecleaner once a month. We outsource big landscaping projects once every year or 2 but otherwise just do yard maintaining and DH usually does that.

In terms of other hidden ways I may "throw money " at something instead of doing myself: I have a nice leather handbag that is three years old and the handle broke off. If I didn't work I may take the time to contact the company and send it back etc. What I will probably do to save money is try to get it fixed. And ultimately I'm likely to buy another bag.

I may clip coupons or whatever if I stayed home, or shop for more bargains. I tend to prioritize time over money in that regard, though we do a fair amount of shopping at Whole Foods and they don't really compete on price. I don't belong to Costco etc. because I never want to spend my weekends at Costco. Maybe it would be worth it if I stayed home and could get there on a random weekday, though I'm not sure what people buy there...we are really anal about produce and poultry etc. so imagine I would just buy paper products etc. there but I'm not sure.

[Anonymous]

Yes, yes, and yes to outsourcing. Amazon Prime, I heart you -- for every single minute I DON'T have to spend waiting in line at a store to buy pretty much anything.

[Anonymous]

I only have one kid but we both work FT as attorneys and outsource virtually nothing other than FT preschool. Of course, it's easier with only one, but we just take him along for our errands and he actually enjoys the trips to the store, home depot, etc. We cook dinner together (simple recipes) and he likes his jobs of washing broccoli or getting to press the button on the mini prep. I like to think that it expands his horizons so he doesn't think life is just about getting to do fun stuff.

[Anonymous]

As much as we can afford! We can't afford (or choose not to) outsource everything. We used to have a house cleaner come once every 2 weeks. We choose to increase it to once a week because it appears as if we can afford it. We may have to cut a vacation this year, but DH and I decided that not having to clean house on weekends was worth a vacation.

[Anonymous]

I'm all for outsourcing, but does anyone worry that we're not teaching our LOs how to care for themselves? How will they learn to cook, garden, grocery shop, do laundry, etc., if we don't teach them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for outsourcing, but does anyone worry that we're not teaching our LOs how to care for themselves? How will they learn to cook, garden, grocery shop, do laundry, etc., if we don't teach them?

It doesn't have to be black or white. Outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean you never do any of those things in daily life. Just because we have a housecleaning service once a week, doesn't mean that we NEVER clean in between -- we have to, or else the place would get pretty gross. So yes, our kids do learn how to sweep, wipe down counters, clean toilets, vacuum, etc. And relying on meal services or take-out also doesn't mean that we NEVER cook -- we cook quite a bit, actually, and our kids help us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for outsourcing, but does anyone worry that we're not teaching our LOs how to care for themselves? How will they learn to cook, garden, grocery shop, do laundry, etc., if we don't teach them?

that's funny that you point this out. And before anyone responds that kids don't notice, that would be incorrect for any kid over the age of 7 or so.

I married, then divorced, a man who grew up in a house with 97% of life's unpleasant or banal tasks outsourced. Like PPs. Like PPs, dad "traveled a lot" and mom was somewhat busy and essentially didn't want to "spend her free time" in line at Giant or Target. Or sprinkling grass seed onto the lawn.

Fine. The trick here is that exH's parents had the income to do all of these things (housekeeper, landscaper, babysitter who picked kids up from NWDC private, tutor, handyman/painter). exH never had to: paint, mow the grass, run to People's drug store to pick up Tylenol for mom, shovel, walk to Safeway on Connecticut to get an onion for dinner, MAKE dinner, load the dishwasher, change his own sheets, etc etc etc.

And guess what? when exH grew up, he was inclined to do none of these ^ tasks, ever. So he paid recent immigrants to do all of these tasks in our busy NWDC two-income household. That was fine for a while. And then guess what happened? That HHI went down, way down. But the laundry still needed to be done, the sheets changed, the meal prepared, the kids picked up from school, the sidewalk shoveled and the grass reseeded.

Do you imagine that exH rose to the task and grabbed a shovel? Or woke up one day and announced he was going to fix the towel rack himself, since there was no more income to pay Joe the Handyman to be on retainer?

Nope! No help = it doesn't get done.

So you "throw money at the problem" PPs ..... make sure your non-working kids always have plenty of money in the checking account to "throw" for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for outsourcing, but does anyone worry that we're not teaching our LOs how to care for themselves? How will they learn to cook, garden, grocery shop, do laundry, etc., if we don't teach them?

Not worried at all. We cook as a family, we do spot cleaning , we do our own grocery shopping, if something needs to be washed before laundry pick up comes we do our own laundry, etc. We outsource some stuff but we don't totally not do it. DS is learning just fine how to care for himself.