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Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about money and priorities on Corporette, I thought it might be interesting to ask: how much help do you have in your life? Do you have a nanny, au pair, or other paid childcare worker in your life? Do you have unpaid helpers like parents or siblings who help you out regularly? Do you have a killer assistant at work who you rely on for a lot of gatekeeping/scheduling needs? Do you have a cleaning service, lawn service, snow removal service, etc? Do you use a personal shopper? Do you regularly use virtual assistant services? Do you have a personal assistant or chef, or have you found other ways to get help with those tasks such as hiring someone local to meal prep for you or keeping a subscription to a meal delivery service? How about a personal trainer, or a headhunter who’s been extraordinarily helpful over more than just one job?
We’ve talked about a lot of this on the blog before, but I’d love to hear about your current situation… some of our previous discussions include:
- How to Hire an Assistant at the Office (and How to Delegate To Your Assistant)
- I Tried To Use Virtual Assistants to Delegate Family Tasks – Here’s How It Went
- How to Hire a Personal Trainer
- How to Hire a Cleaning Service
- How to Level Up Your Childcare
- How to Upgrade Personal Services
- How to Hire a Housekeeper or House Manager (inspired by this amazing Medium article listing all the help a self-made millionaire has at home)
- How to Use a Personal Assistant (with tips from a friend who actually used to be a personal assistant to a a wealthy businessman)
- Have Your Parents Helped You In Your Career? (this was a fun discussion, based on a study that found that post-college, 75% of parents were reminding children of deadlines and making appointments for them)
Readers, I’d love to hear from you, though — how much help do you have in your life — from nannies to work assistants to personal shoppers or trainers or more? What has made the biggest impact? Has it changed through the years, e.g., before or after children, marriage, certain jobs, or more?
(Note that there is a version of this post over at Corporette also, but it feels like this might be a very different discussion for parents, so this post is for you guys!)
Stock photo via Stencil.
Anon says
Paid help: daycare and a biweekly cleaning service.
Unpaid help: My parents live a mile from us and we spend a lot of time with them. For now, they mostly replace paid childcare (they pick our kid up early at daycare frequently and keep her home from school occasionally). We don’t use them for sick days because we don’t want to get them sick, and we typically plan vacations around known daycare closures. I’m so happy they’re nearby and my kid has a close relationship with them, but in terms of how much help they are to us, it would be a lot harder to give up our cleaning service than their help. That said, we expect to lean on them more once we start elementary school. The plan is for them to provide aftercare at least 2-3 days per week.
Isabella says
I have actually been wondering if my apparent need for help is reasonable or not. LO is almost 6 months. DH and I both work fulltime. LO’s daycare is through my work, so it’s exactly the same hours– if I get a holiday or early afternoon, daycare is guaranteed to be closed. And I feel like I’m completely drowning and deferring an unacceptable level of responsibility. We only ever have time for the absolutely immediate tasks, basically food, dishes, and laundry, and those are rarely done well or before the last minute. I never have time for things like changing sheets, cleaning bathrooms, or paying bills. Much less things like getting the leaky roof fixed before winter.
DH has started pitching in more after lots of serious talks, but our standard of living still seems to be so last-minute and unhealthy. And yet I feel like I never have a minute to spare (writing this whole pumping at work). How do other people manage?
TheElms says
I do laundry at night after my kids are in bed (so between 8pm and midnight) or on weekends. Folding has to happen when the 3 year old is asleep otherwise she unfolds it all. I put all the bills I can on autopay. I do stuff like scheduling household repairs while I eat lunch or enter my billable hours. (I’m currently eating lunch, scrolling this site, and on hold with a doctor’s office).
Anon says
Wow, are you me?
I’ve just accepted that this is my life now, to be honest. Three kids, two busy parents. I try to throw money at everything I can but that usually means ordered dinners only. I don’t have time to even outsource much, and I don’t have the budget for more (2 kids in child care, 1 in Catholic school, mortgage, and the equivalent of a student loan payment that’s currently in covid deferment).
I am lucky enough to have childcare help from grandparents – they cover the 3:15pm pickups for my oldest. We pickup the younger two children around 5:00 and then it’s a scramble to bedtime, both theirs and ours. I’m exhausted at all times.
Isabella says
Part of my frustration is that a grandparent was willing to move in and help with all this. But a different grandparent disapproved of that plan, so DH backed out of that plan. And now the script is that DH is already doing more than many dads (maybe more than he should have to) so why am I not content?
Anon says
Your DH sounds like the problem here. If I’m reading this correctly, your parent was planning to move in, but his parent disapproved of that and he caved to their demands? That’s not ok. And “more than many dads do” is sadly a very low bar. Don’t let him get away with this. Make him pull his weight. Take him to counseling if it comes to that.
Isabella says
We’re working on the marriage problems. But I am really struggling with the fact that counseling doesn’t change the facts of 2 busy parents and not much budget flexibility.
Anon says
Two working parents is definitely hard. But I would really encourage you to try to make room in the budget for a cleaning service. I would give up a lot of luxuries to have that. Other things that can be outsourced (like yard work and grocery delivery) don’t have nearly the same value for me, and I would not outsource them unless I was working crazy hours and/or rolling in money. But I really don’t understand how families with two working parents function without a cleaning service.
Anonymous says
Sometimes I wonder whether a cleaning service might be a better investment than marriage counseling.
Anonymous says
Right there with you on your last sentence. It’s so disheartening. If you demand that I work outside the home and bring in a salary, you have to step up and do half the stuff that would be my full-time job if I were a SAHM. In practice this translates into taking on a few of the physical chores and complaining bitterly about them, while I still do most of the physical work and all of the planning and logistics. These dudes who grew up with SAHMs, especially wealthy SAHMs with hired help, just do not get it.
I have no hired help. If I suggest hiring a cleaning service the counter-argument is “what we really need is to hire someone to do MY chores.” Sorry, dude. I am not paying someone to do your chores so you can spend even more time lying on the couch complaining that I am ignoring you while I run around trying to get my stuff done.
Anon says
I think this is normal to some degree, especially with an infant. I have a 4 year old and still let stuff around the house slide, especially in times when we’re sick or traveling, which is a lot lately. But you should get a cleaning service so you don’t have to do stuff like cleaning bathrooms.
Lily says
Get a biweekly cleaning service! And just wipe down kitchen counters nightly and take out the trash when needed otherwise. Throw in laundry at random times and fold it while watching TV in the evening or as a wind-down activity on your bed. If you aren’t particular about laundry, you could also send it out to a wash and fold service.
Anonymous says
I feel like this was my life when my kid was 0-2. Granted we were in the pandemic for much of that, but I felt like I didn’t do anything but parenting, working, and very light cleaning in that two year span. Now that my son is 3 (and we finally hired bi-weekly cleaners!!) I’m finally getting to the other side of it and have more room to breathe. I’m meal planning again, cooking more, exercising, and easing back into more regular social events too. Keep in mind, once you stop pumping/nursing, that will give you a chunk of time back too.
Isabella says
I know it will help, but I really want to EBF for as long as possible. If chores that other people could help with get in the way, I will really feel like my priorities are off.
Anon says
Your kid will be starting solids soon which will mean you can likely cut back on pumping even without ending the EBFing relationship. Pumping and cleaning pump parts was what really felt like a time sink for me. Nursing in contrast was easy and faster than serving a kid a bottle.
Anon says
I have a 13 month old so only a little farther than you, but your husband’s need for help is completely reasonable. Note- this is not YOUR need for help. You are keeping an infant alive with your body while working full time. Your job is done. It also sounds like you’re in charge of 100% of the daycare drop offs, pick ups and closures. So your job is more than done. Your husband needs to step the F up and handle the rest. You guys are deep, deep into it right now so it’s totally understandable that you have very low standards of getting things done. But it sounds like your husband would benefit greatly from a weekly cleaner who’ll do the sheets and a grocery/meal delivery service to help make him cooking dinners easier.
Anon says
for the first year of our twins life we definitely lived a much less clean lifestyle. we had our apartment cleaned maybe 3 times during the year and otherwise our bathrooms were never cleaned, sheets never changed, etc. and yes DH needs to step it up. If said parent isn’t going to live with you, can they come visit for 2-4 weeks, to give you some breathing room?
GCA says
Your phrasing about “DH pitching in” makes me think there’s an unequal partnership going on (he should be pulling his weight, not just pitching in), and as usual Anne Helen Petersen nails it: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/what-to-actually-do-about-an-unequal
Anonymous says
This article is SO GOOD. The part about the Noticer hit especially close to home. I have been trying to explain this to my husband for years. He thinks he does more than me because he handles some of the routine daily and weekly chores. I do at least an equal share of these, but I am also the Noticer and the planner and the accountant and all of that. The cognitive load is massive and unrelenting. When he’s at work he is just working; when I’m at work I constantly worry about whether homework is really getting done and how I need to get the gutters cleaned and update the family photo wall and order the part for the leaky faucet and rebalance our investments and measure for new curtains and do the taxes and register for summer camp and and and …
TheElms says
In loose order of importance to maintaining my ability to work / sanity: Nanny, cleaning service, dog walker, meal delivery services ( Home Chef and Cook Unity), yard maintenance crew (that also cleans gutters in fall, removes snow in winter!), dry cleaning service that picks up and drops off at home
TheElms says
Forgot grocery delivery service.
Anon says
Paid help: a nanny, grocery delivery
Unpaid help: my parents come up whenever nanny is off for an extended period of time (ex: she went home to her country of origin for 3 weeks this summer). They also spent 7 weeks here following the birth of my first child, and will probably do similar after we have our second.
Anonymous says
Paid help: Biweekly cleaners – TBH this is standard where I live – only a couple working moms I know don’t have this.
Unpaid help: Me – switched to part time last year (still undecided if this was the right decision), my parents who pick kids up three days a week and drive them to various afterschool activities so that our weekends have zero extra circulars. This is just as much about my parents as it is the kids. Keeps my parents have sitting around watching tv all day and not being active enough. Down side is we have basically no back up if kids are sick as my parents have various medical conditions so cannot care for sick kids.
Anon says
I also don’t know any working moms who don’t have a cleaning service, and I’m not in fancy circles where everyone is a Big Law attorney or a doctor. Many families we know have HHIs under $150k.
Anon says
Counterpoint, 2 income family with HHI of > $400K and we don’t have a cleaning service. I got tired of having to clean after the cleaners because they didn’t do things to my standards, so I just stopped having them come. It takes me less time and annoys me less because I’m not spending money on subpar cleaning.
Seafinch says
Same counter point. I posted on the main board in response. Cleaners are pretty standard in my circle but with four kids and two jobs (command position in the Army and JAG) we don’t have any cleaning help or any other help other than childcare. Same exact rationale as you. I just don’t see the value.
Anon says
That’s totally fair- I just truly hate cleaning and have low cleaning standards so will happily pay a lot of money for never having to scrub a toilet.
Anonymous says
Another counterpoint here. Two income family, no cleaners. We used to have bi-weekly cleaners but stopped about a year ago. For me it’s not about high standards, which I do not have when it comes to cleaning. It was that we are trying to save money and be able to downsize our careers before retirement age. When I realized we were spending almost $5K per year on the cleaners, we decided it’s definitely something we can do ourselves (and our two kids–age 5 and 6–have to help a lot).
Anon says
Oof.
Nanny, housekeeper, yard guy, personal trainer. We also regularly get grocery delivery. We both work fulltime and couldn’t make it happen otherwise. I have local grandparents part of the year who can occasionally give a kid a ride somewhere, but for the most part we manage without family help.
Anonymous says
How do you find cleaners that actually get stuff clean? I have tried a couple of different cleaning services and was disappointed with both. Things that were advertised and agreed upon as part of the service, like dusting ceiling fans, didn’t happen at all. Other things were done halfway. They only seem to want to do the easy stuff like vacuuming and wiping counters that I don’t mind doing myself. I want them to do the annoying and/or difficult stuff like getting the shower sparkling clean and getting the cobwebs out of the corners. It is so expensive that I can’t justify it unless the results are amazing and I don’t have to go back and redo half of it myself.
Anon says
My standards are not that high. They get the bathrooms and kitchens pretty clean but I don’t think they do things like dust ceiling fans (TBH I didn’t even know this was a thing you’re “supposed” to do until I read this comment). I don’t mind vacuuming, but I dislike cleaning sinks and especially toilets, so to me it’s worth the cost of the cleaning service to not have to do these things. Also even tasks that aren’t unpleasant like vacuuming are still relatively time-consuming? It seems to me if you don’t have a cleaning service you would have to devote the better part of a day to cleaning every couple of weeks (or at a minimum, once a month) and that just sounds horrible to me. Weekends should be for family and friends and relaxing, not chores.
Anonymous says
If you could see the half-inch layer of dust on my ceiling fan right now you would understand why you are “supposed” to dust them.
Anon says
Eh, I think my standards are probably just a lot lower than yours. I grew up with a working mom and even with a cleaning service our house was never that clean so I think that’s why I don’t particularly care about my own house being immaculate. I care about not having piles of junk everywhere and about not having gross things like spilled food or soiled toilets, but I don’t really care if my baseboards are sparkling.
GCA says
Two full-time working parents, two kids 7 and 4.
Paid help: daycare and grocery delivery. Occasional date night babysitter.
Unpaid help: a village. We don’t have any nearby family, but we do have friends and neighbors who will watch kids, go for a walk or run with one of us, our kids go back and forth between each other’s houses, etc. and we reciprocate (if you are at our house and it’s dinnertime, you get fed).
DH was in grad school when we had our first. We lived in grad housing and had no budget for any paid help beyond childcare, so we are still kind of in that frame of mind – ‘whoa, we can pay for babysitters and takeout now?’ The flip side was that we had an immediate local network of friends and neighbors all in the same boat.
Anonymous says
Very similar here. No paid help but we do have a pretty nice village for carpool duty.
Anonymous says
Paid help: tax accountant, monthly cleaners, grocery delivery, Blue Apron, daycare, babysitter once a month. Would like to outsource yard maintenance as well but DH would rather do it himself
Unpaid help: none – grandparents live over an hour away
Anon says
Oh man, we outsource basically everything. I’m in-house counsel, husband is big law partner, and we have three kids (2,10,12). We have: housekeeper who comes twice a week and also does laundry; full-time nanny (who runs errands while the toddler is at nursery school); gardener/landscaper who comes weekly; weekly pool service; grocery delivery; babysitter for weekend date nights. Basically the only household/family tasks we do are cooking, some minor handyman stuff, and weekend/after hours childcare.
JCL21 says
Paid help: nanny, biweekly housekeeper, lawn/garden service, grocery delivery
Unpaid help: ~5 hours spread over the week of grandparent childcare
Despite this, which two big jobs and 4 year old twins, it feels like we are drowning. Modern parenting is relentless.
Anonymous says
“Modern parenting is relentless.” Yes. Our mothers weren’t expected to have jobs outside the home, and the expectations of them as parents were far lower than the expectations for mothers today. When I was assigned to write a report in elementary school, the teacher took us to the school library to check out sources and broke the whole process of research, note-taking, outlining, writing, and re-writing down into separate assignments that we were expected to complete independently as homework. When my daughter was assigned to write a report, the instructions were “write a report on X topic with five properly cited non-Internet sources.” I had to break the process down and lead her through each step. It was hours and hours of work. I am expected to check math homework and make her redo problems until every one is correct. You are also expected to shuttle them to a zillion sports practices and music lessons starting in preschool, along with specialty day camps that run 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. with no wraparound care. It just gets worse as they get older; when they are applying for college, you are supposed to help them edit their essays and coordinate their applications and hire a college counselor and take them on multiple college tours. When I applied to college, my mom just reminded me once or twice that it would be good if I turned in a couple of applications on time.
Anon says
1 toddler
Paid help: daycare (most importantly for about 5 extra hours a week than I work so I can get a lot of our life errands done), biweekly cleaner, Home Chef meal kits, take out every Friday and Saturday night. We own a townhome so don’t have to do yard maintenance.
Unpaid help: in town grandparents who can cover a mild sick day if one of us can’t, sibling who’ll trade babysitting with us (but has 4 kids so those are intense trades), out of town grandparents who come to visit q3months and insist we have a date night while we’re in town (love them)
Anonymous says
Paid help: daycare, housecleaner every 3 weeks. We occasionally hire a handyman for projects we technically could do ourselves like repaint our porch (lots of ladders). We are interviewing a babysitter this weekend for the first time since covid!!!
Unpaid help: local grandparents cover a lot of school closure days (they have the kids all week this week when there are basically no camps available) and used to cover an occasional date but can’t right now. One non local grandparents was a tax preparer prior to retirement and does our taxes. My dad often helps us with car stuff like installing a new battery.
Anon says
Two kids – one 20 months, one 4.5.
DH is in BigLaw and travels a fair amount. I have my own big job, but fortunately have flexibility which means I can block time for kids appointments and sign-off by 5 if I make up the work later. I also mostly WFH with the random in-office day or onsite day (likely 1-2x/week at MOST) which helps a TON. We also pare down kid activities (they are currently only in swim, and I otherwise try to enroll in activities that are provided at preschool/daycare), and prioritize family/friend events over classmate birthday parties.
Paid: FT preschool/daycare (lunch + 2 snacks provided), cleaning service (1x/3 weeks), lawn service, pest control, grocery delivery, takeout/food pickup on weekends, peleton app, babysitter when needed
Unpaid help: Local family (including one live-in grandparent – not sure how long this will last but we love it). We moved to our current city largely because of family/community and it has enriched our lives tremendously. I love that our kids have day-to-day type relationships with grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.
Cb says
1 kid, 5, who just started school. I’m an academic and work a plane ride away. I travel 25% of the time (but mostly during university terms) and we have no local family. My husband is government, he works quite strict hours – anything over, he gets to take later on.
Paid help:
1) Wrap around care – less than we need, but enough to keep us ticking over. We have to cover Tuesday from 3 onward and Friday from 12, but kiddo has made friends, so sometimes had a playdate one of those days. And summer / holiday clubs.
2) Weekly housekeepers – 2 cleaners come for an hour Wednesday AM and handle all the big cleaning. Our house is 1000 square feet and they skip the office/sunroom so they can get it done quite quickly.
3) Weekly meal kit boxes for 3 meals a week (and normally they give us leftovers for lunches).
Unpaid help:
1) Assorted friends – we have a few local friends who we exchange childcare with. Have a migraineand your partner is working all weekend? Drop your kids off! I’m stuck on a call and can’t do pick up? Get S and Ju to do it.
2) Grandparents – my parents moved “closer” to us, in another country but a 3 hour £100 plane ride, versus an all day trek from SF to the UK. They have the school calendar on their fridge and aim to be here for half terms.