I am not talking at work. I am talking about stuff around the house, personal stuff and for your kids. Stuff that the mom traditionally used to do. Would you outsource more if you weren’t restricted by finances or a weird sense of mommy guilt or do you enjoy doing the all stuff you do?
This conversation has come up in our family lately. Especially with Little OL’s birthday party. I did it all myself, designed and made the invitations and printables, made the cakes, biscuits and everything else, including the party boxes. I even blew up all the balloons. I however LOVE doing all that stuff (well maybe not the balloons part). I love creating stuff, making stuff and being busy. Mr OL on the other hands says he would gladly pay somebody to do it all. He would prefer just arrive on the day. I have told him that when all she wants to do is go to the Spur or something similar then he and his wallet are on duty.
It got me thinking about other aspects of my life. How much do I outsource and if I outsourced more would it simplify my life and let me get on with doing more stuff I enjoyed or do I really enjoy what it is that I do anyway? I do have a lady that cleans my house; she comes 4 days a week. She does all the cleaning, laundry, ironing etc. But, I have been wondering if I could utilise her time better for example by getting her to prepare the veggies for the evening meal? We also have a garden service that mows our lawn and have had a gardener every other weekend. (He went and got a full time job and we have not found another).
Then there is Little OL’s After Care, I work full time so am in an essence outsourcing the care of my child, prior to her going to day care / school we had a full time nanny/domestic.
There are so many services out there, au pairs, night nurses, transport to after school activities, pre-packed lunches, party planners, pool cleaners – the list is endless. How many of these kinds of services do you use or plan to use as your child gets older or do you feel it your responsibility where feasible to do as much of it as possible?
PS: Sorry about the overuse of the word “outsource”. It’s a hot topic at work too.
My Happy Pace! 
this is one of my favourite topics ever (google delegating on the organising blog :))
I firmly believe in delegating anything (anything) that is not my core strength or that doesn’t need ME to do.
With my business, I delegate anything boring – only I can coach, write, speak or blog (the actual writing – sometimes I send the text and photo to her too) so those things I do.
Home – I delegate my house cleaning, garden (I want to outsource the pool but D has a “thing” about it….) and yes, nanny S prepares the veg for me too. So basically I do have to plan everything on a Sunday and I leave her about 10 things on a list with due dates (!) and she gets it all done. The things I don’t outsource at home are organising and decluttering our stuff. NO one touches my cupboards 🙂 🙂
Just this morning D and I were talking about these class birthday parties – I will write about it tomorrow I think – and I said I don’t mind the socialising or the gift (he was like WHATTTTT?) but I said I love giving people things and the wrapping, etc. is perhaps the best part for me, so the more I can do the better 🙂 yes, completely mad like you are with the party!
Kidding! I love doing the parties – that’s why we celebrate the half birthday too. I just don’t like the cake so I outsource that to P&P and Woolies 🙂
1/2 year parties, I like that idea. Delegation is great, do you use a virtual assistant or company?
an assistant.
Well I dont really delegate much except 2 days a week I have a maid to help me with the heavy house stuff and ironing. I am home so delegating would feel weird. I chose to leave the working world to do the kid thing and i cant say I am sorry – sure, it makes me mental sometimes but I would prefer not to miss this part of life.
I feel rocks though about outsourcing kids birthday stuff with 3 birthdays in 3wks I would do myself injury if I even attempted it all myself. That being said I only outsource the cake usually. We do have a gardener once a month to keep things ticking over.
In a perfect world I would have someone do all my grocery shopping and cooking for me. Somehow I doubt you are surprised by that tho.
I am sure if I had more than one I would outsourse much more of the party stuff too. Especially if they were that close together
As much as I like to be hands on, I’ve started adopting my husband’s motto – is the time spent on it more than it would cost to pay someone else to do? If so outsource!!!! Of course somethings I would do myself eg I’ll do the cooking but get my helper to do the washing up 🙂 we used to get someone to clean the pool, but for almost 2 years now it’s been added back to the DIY list.
That’s a very good motto. I think I need to reassess a few aspects
I like this post because this have come to my mind since yesterday. I do have someone who cleans the house and that takes a lot of my plate. But since this morning, I have informed everyone that they will from now on be responsible for themselves. I can’t take care of them forever. They need to take food out of the fridge if they do fancy some. I can’t be forever controlling over them. They need to take responsibilities on themselves as well. So yes, I have since yesterday began to outsource more duties. I have to because of my studies which will start this coming week.
Yes, you can’t take on everything. I think for a sanity point of view we need to look at simplifying.
Nothing 🙂 I outsource nothing. Well I have a cleaning service that come in once a month to clean the walls/doors and cupboards but that’s it!
Wow! Would you consider it or do you like doing it this way, or is it just that this is the way you know?
If I had the money I would love an au- pair and take the kids out of aftercare so that they can be together more often. At the moment they are in 3 seperate after care places at one school.
Lucy cook for me about 3 days to 4 days a week – I can not go without that. She also cleans and irons. We have a gardener that does some work once a week but we do a lot too. He just does the basic upkeep.
I also think an Au Pair is the way to go in a lot of cases if financially possible. Ideally I would love my job to me more flexible or work part time so I could do that in the afternoons but for now Little OL will remain in After Care.
I have someone cleaning my house and I have someone who does all my ironing. I can’t do that and work full time. Now if I could only find someone that would be willing to cook 😉
I had a husband that did all the cooking until he got a different job last July – now he works longer hours and the cooking thing kind off flew out the window. It sucks!
Which is why I am not looking at ways of outsourcing some of it like veggie preparation. One of the ladies I work with leaves her domestic worker the recipes and ingredieant each day and comes home to a fully cooked meal. Very good planning.
At least Mr OL still cooks on the weekends.
I tried to outsource some of the kids meals to Nanny S – we LOVE curries and on those days the kids will eat something else but am afraid, after they kept telling me “this food isn’t nice” and I really don’t have fussy kids (you’ll see WHEN we meet one day – they eat mostly anything), I rather just cook so the food doesn’t go to waste (something that sends me over the edge)…
once i tasted… and they were right 😦