I have been thinking about something like this, but from a different angle.
There’s a lot of things in life where you do a lot of things that use up resource X, but one or two dominate. If you try to conserve X, there’s not much point in conserving it anywhere else. Unfortunately, few people bother to work out what dominates, and they try to conserve everywhere.
Trying to save water? Don’t worry about anything except meat consumption and lawns. Trying to save electricity? Stick to trying to save on heating and air conditioning. Don’t bother with the lights. Trying to help people? Stick to GiveWell’s top recommendations. Don’t bother with anyone local.
Trying to save money? It might not be worth bothering to clean your own house.
Edit: If you disagree about what I’m saying you should worry about, feel free to comment. I’m interested.
You know, people keep suggesting that housecleaning is something that’s cheap to outsource, but when I look at cleaning services, they always seem quite expensive. Several hundred a month if you want it done regularly. I normally clean my apartment once a week.
I’m not sure if this is just my area or what. [Edit: It also seems ridiculously hard to get an actual price off of any cleaning service’s website, even a ballpark figure, which is annoying as hell.]
Continuing to clean on your own but also having someone come in once a month means you can offload the most unpleasant tasks and your place is also much cleaner than it otherwise would be IME.
The biggest problem I have with outsourcing housecleaning is that it is not only fairly expensive, but also very hard to find someone who does a good job.
We currently pay $90 every two weeks for a cleaner who comes and does about 2-3 hours worth of work. It is 2-3 hours worth of work that my wife or I could do about as fast if we chose to, and either one of us would generally do as good or better a job.
It’s still probably worth it, because most of the time we didn’t have a cleaner, we didn’t choose to do it, even though it made us happier to have a cleaner house. We absolutely limit their tasks to the things we are less likely to do regularly, or are physically hard on our bodies (floors, showers, toilet—both of us have back problems). Overall the house is cleaner, and in fact, we are motivated to do certain things (pick up, organize, clear dishes in drainer, etc.) in order to have the house ready for the cleaner.
I think the point at which it makes sense to outsource this is when you are making around $30-40 per hour for your time.
Most finance advice I’ve seen (and I’ve spent a good bit of time in the finance blogosphere) starts by saying that you should track what your expenses are for precisely this reason.
I have been thinking about something like this, but from a different angle.
There’s a lot of things in life where you do a lot of things that use up resource X, but one or two dominate. If you try to conserve X, there’s not much point in conserving it anywhere else. Unfortunately, few people bother to work out what dominates, and they try to conserve everywhere.
Trying to save water? Don’t worry about anything except meat consumption and lawns. Trying to save electricity? Stick to trying to save on heating and air conditioning. Don’t bother with the lights. Trying to help people? Stick to GiveWell’s top recommendations. Don’t bother with anyone local.
Trying to save money? It might not be worth bothering to clean your own house.
Edit: If you disagree about what I’m saying you should worry about, feel free to comment. I’m interested.
You know, people keep suggesting that housecleaning is something that’s cheap to outsource, but when I look at cleaning services, they always seem quite expensive. Several hundred a month if you want it done regularly. I normally clean my apartment once a week.
I’m not sure if this is just my area or what. [Edit: It also seems ridiculously hard to get an actual price off of any cleaning service’s website, even a ballpark figure, which is annoying as hell.]
Continuing to clean on your own but also having someone come in once a month means you can offload the most unpleasant tasks and your place is also much cleaner than it otherwise would be IME.
Edit: for pricing use HomeJoy.
The biggest problem I have with outsourcing housecleaning is that it is not only fairly expensive, but also very hard to find someone who does a good job.
We currently pay $90 every two weeks for a cleaner who comes and does about 2-3 hours worth of work. It is 2-3 hours worth of work that my wife or I could do about as fast if we chose to, and either one of us would generally do as good or better a job.
It’s still probably worth it, because most of the time we didn’t have a cleaner, we didn’t choose to do it, even though it made us happier to have a cleaner house. We absolutely limit their tasks to the things we are less likely to do regularly, or are physically hard on our bodies (floors, showers, toilet—both of us have back problems). Overall the house is cleaner, and in fact, we are motivated to do certain things (pick up, organize, clear dishes in drainer, etc.) in order to have the house ready for the cleaner.
I think the point at which it makes sense to outsource this is when you are making around $30-40 per hour for your time.
Most finance advice I’ve seen (and I’ve spent a good bit of time in the finance blogosphere) starts by saying that you should track what your expenses are for precisely this reason.