Just as my son turned 5 months old, I returned to work. Immediately, I began to feel overwhelmed with the burden of running a household, caring for an infant, and showing up alert and coherent at work. I simply needed more time to get everything done and then sleep!
Everyone else around me seemed to be gracefully handling multiple children and working full-time in successful careers. Some new moms were even getting promotions at work soon after returning from maternity leave. I was still languishing in survival mode.
Mindset shift: Problems money can fix
When I sought advice from my mommy network, I received recommendations that my partner should be stepping up and helping. However, my husband had just started intern year of his residency program. He only came home intermittently during his grueling 100-plus-hour workweeks and was rarely a coherent human being. I could barely trust him to hold the baby for a few minutes without falling asleep, much less demand that he do the laundry!
After several months, I sought professional counseling/therapy to help me handle the emotional and physical burden of managing life with a sleep-avoiding infant, an absent partner, and a full-time job. The therapist gave me this advice:
"There are many problems that money can't fix, but if money can fix your problems, then this is the time to spend it."
She reasoned that I had made specific decisions in my education and career path, such as pursuing graduate degrees and a pharma industry job. Though perhaps these were not always strategic decisions for the purpose of making money, the consequence of these decisions had led to a certain level of income. And the purpose of that income was to allow me to live the type of life I wanted or needed to live. Or, at the very least, this income should help fix some of my current problems.
Editorial note: As Michelle noted in her post, career success includes having the financial means to be comfortable at home.
This revelation led to a complete mindset shift for me. I had to get out of the "starving graduate student" mentality I had been stuck in for so long. I needed to consider that I might actually afford to hire help. What better purpose was there for my income than to make life easier and less stressful for myself? And yet, I didn't even know where to start.
No role model for outsourcing
My mom is an admirable woman. As a young mother, she moved to the other side of the world with an infant (me). She is a dedicated teacher, a brilliant storyteller, and a baby whisperer. I obviously owe a lot of my life's successes to her sacrifices, support, and strength.
However, she is not a role model for a career-driven woman trying to balance work, family, and home. For most of my childhood, she was a stay-at-home mom and did everything in the house. She managed our family's finances, the grocery shopping, childcare, cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. She did everything so that my dad could excel at his demanding job and so that my siblings and I could focus on school.
When I was growing up, we also didn't have the financial resources to get help. My parents had never hired a babysitter. They tackled lawn care and home maintenance issues themselves. Rainstorms were good enough for washing the car. Summer camp and family vacations were stories I heard from friends. My mom gave us all haircuts at home. We rarely purchased new clothes.
Exploring outsourcing to fix my problems
Having grown up in a household that had no experience with hiring help, I wasn't even sure where to begin to outsource my labor. Once I started asking friends and colleagues, I learned that the possibilities were much broader than I had even suspected.
I knew about delivered meal kits, but personal chefs seemed like a luxury that had been previously out of reach. Sure, I could take my car to the car wash, but turns out that I could pay someone to take my car for a wash AND have it meticulously cleaned of all the crushed Cheerios in every interior crevice.
I set out to find more examples of how families, particularly those with dual demanding careers, are outsourcing. Around this time, I started listening to the Best of Both Worlds podcast, which encourages working moms to explore examples of buying more time for their personal and professional pursuits.
As outlined in the podcast's episode on outsourcing, we already outsource if we buy our food from the grocery store instead of growing it ourselves or use the post office to mail letters instead of hand-delivering them. However, outsourcing of women's work around the house or for their families is often considered a shameful luxury. This mindset needs to change. Importantly, outsourcing this type of work places a monetary value on the time that women spend doing it.
Finally, last year I dipped a toe into the waters of outsourcing. I started with getting someone to clean the house every month, then upped it to every 2 weeks. After that, I hired a photographer friend to sort, edit, and arrange the baby’s first year of photos into an album. Now, I am exploring grocery and meal deliveries.
The problems that money might fix
In my pursuit of outsourcing examples, I made a list (not comprehensive, of course!) that I might consult in the future during the inevitable times when my life becomes overwhelming and I run out of time to do it all.
Household outsourcing
- House cleaning, including deep cleaning and frequent tidying up
- Home decorating
- Laundry
- Organizing
- Home maintenance
- Home improvement projects
- Lawn, gardening, landscaping
- Snow shoveling
- Online shopping for household supplies
- Car wash and maintenance
Food outsourcing
- Grocery delivery
- Prepared meal delivery or personal chef
- Making lunches or buying lunches at work/school
Personal outsourcing
- Concierge service or personal assistant to run errands, purchase/deliver gifts, pickup or dropoff books at the library
- Prescription delivery from pharmacy
- Party planning
- Filing taxes
- Financial planning
- Clothes shopping
- Vacation planning
- Projects, like holiday cards or photo albums
Childcare outsourcing
- Regular childcare
- Babysitting
- Childcare pickups and dropoffs
- Driving to extracurricular activities
- Homework tutoring
Professional outsourcing
- Professional editing
- Administrative tasks
- Social media presence or branding
- Executive coaching
Next steps on my outsourcing journey
I know now that there are a lot of ways to outsource so that I can buy back my time that can be better spent with my family, on my work, or on myself. I would rather be sleeping or exercising than meal prepping or laundry.
Money makes outsourcing possible, but I do not have an unlimited amount of money. I may have to sacrifice in some other parts of my life to make this lifestyle work. I struggle with balancing the dream of becoming financially independent in the future and getting into a thriving mode (as opposed to surviving mode) today.
Thus, my goal for this year is to thoroughly assess my family's finances. I want to determine how much we can budget for outsourcing and how to prioritize and best allocate those outsourcing dollars.
What are the ways that you outsource? What trade-offs do you make?
For some other ideas, check out these articles:
This is a great post, Wenny. I don’t have kids and I still out source cleaning because I don’t enjoy it at all and having someone help means I can spend that time with friends or at the gym or keeping up with stuff at work.
I was just talking to a friend who is an assistant professor in academia with two kids who is totally overwhelmed right now. Her house is messy and it adds so much stress to her life. I told her to out source cleaning to someone else and at least take that off her plate. She feels so much pressure to be a great mom and a great scientist (and she is those things), and she puts such high expectations on herself. I think she feels like she’s barely keeping things together and feels like she should be able to do it all on her own, but it’s so much. I’m going to send her this post and remind her that hiring someone to help doesn’t mean she’s failed - it just means that she’s choosing to buy back her time.
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing this post with your friend, and I hope that it will be helpful for her. In getting older, I am realizing that time is my most valuable and limited resource, so I do like the concept of buying time if I can. A messy house should be the least of your friend's worries while she's also being a great mom and great scientist! But I am the same way - messiness gives me stress too - and I have been loving especially the days when I come home to a clean house. For others, a messy house doesn't matter, so spending time (or money) on other things makes the most sense.
Great post, and thank you for the honesty. I believe we are harming ourselves with putting a ‘brave face’ and not sharing enough on the struggles of balancing work, motherhood, and being humans.
I try to outsource household task such as cleaning, but keep some that I enjoy ( cooking). I actually went back to doing finances myself, because it gave a sense of power.
Sharing the struggles can definitely really help us all feel like we're not alone! I really appreciate others being honest as well. Glad that you've found ways to outsource what you might not enjoy and keep doing what you like. I'm doing the finances too, and I'm hoping that really understanding them this year will give me a better sense of power and control.