Blog: Why it pays to hire help at home
If you thought household help was only for the rich, think again. Heres a case for outsourcing time-consuming chores -- or ones you simply hate.
By Jennifer Mulrean
When Kathy Fitzgerald Sherman decided to stay home with her first child, she thought shed pursue her lifelong dream of writing. Five years and another baby later, she realized the endless piles of laundry, diaper changes and general household upkeep were leaving little time, let alone inspiration, for the writing career shed imagined.
I was exhausted, and I was not being intellectually stimulated, Sherman says.
So, she analyzed how she was spending her time -- and found that she was putting a whopping 35 hours a week into housework. That was in addition to the three hours of cleaning by a paid weekly service.
Sherman decided shed had enough. She hired a housekeeper for 20 hours a week to cook, clean, grocery shop and do laundry.
The payoff was instantaneous, she says. Within the first week, I felt like I was Cinderella and had been freed from the hearth.
So what did she do with all her newfound time? She spent it with her family, wrote dozens of articles and a book on hiring home help called, A Housekeeper is Cheaper Than a Divorce: Why You Can Afford to Hire Help and How to Get It. She also enrolled in law school.
