If you both work (and can afford it), what jobs do you outsource?

[SnoopLabbyLab]

I’m just interested in what it is normal to outsource and thinking about the implications if we have a recession.

We live in a semi-rural village, and the local economy seems to thrive on local self employed workers (often born in the village, but sometimes from the next town) keeping busy professional working households going, while their occupants work on their own businesses, or in London jobs. I grew up in a suburb of a provincial city, and I knew no-one who had cleaners etc. Maybe I just live in a different type of area now, or maybe it’s become more common. We both work in professional jobs (me only school hours) and have three DC of primary/ early secondary age and two dogs. At the moment we employ a housekeeper (12 hours a week, she has 3 jobs like this), a gardener (2 hours a week), an odd job chap (as and when), a dog walker (twice a week), then visits from chimney sweep, range service etc.

I suppose all of these are choices we could drop at any time (although I’d prefer my chimney not to catch fire), but they do make life much, much better and I feel very loyal, especially to our lovely housekeeper, and one of her families has just halved her hours. I do wonder about the viability of these livelihoods as we enter a financially difficult time. Any thoughts?

What does your housekeeper do? We have a cleaner once a fortnight, which is pretty standard where we are (if not weekly) but that's it.

We have a cleaner. I'd love a housekeeper.

I'm thinking of just having cleaner once a fortnight rather than weekly, even though we need a weekly clean as she's so unreliable. We pay her anyway as it's only fair as we get sick leave and holiday from work, but it's hard with a new baby and being ill myself when she doesn't show up or just does half her hours as she's feeling a bit weak.

I agree, we are going into worrying times and some people are more at risk of change than others. 😞
I work in an organisation which provides support to people and we are now helping people who have not needed help before.
I don't outsource anything op, but in your situation I would continue to employ those people for as long as I could because we are all connected even if some of us are further away from the problems than others and I don't want to see society come apart at the seams.

I am interested to know what a housekeeper does - it sounds v Downton!

We have a chimney sweep and that's it. But, once renovations are complete we'll get a cleaner again.

We enjoy gardening so until I'm too old to manage don't need one. We do have a tree guy for helping with tree felling, pruning, and chopping up large logs.

Now if I could find a dog Walker with space I'd have one in a shot!

We have a cleaner once a week for 3 hours and I send the ironing out as well.
We did have a gardener but sadly he died from Covid and we haven’t had the heart to replace him, DH is doing it himself for now

She basically does what one of us would do for two days if we were a SAHP I guess. She cleans the house really well, does laundry, irons, changes sheets, arranged flowers (that’s our whim, she did a floristry course and is amazing), keeps the dogs out of trouble, cleans inside fridges etc., gets rooms ready if we have visitors, unloads the grocery delivery, has a cuppa and chats Ito the dogs. She’s normally a few hours in credit and will happily nip over to let the dogs out, make me a Christmas heart arrangement etc. Lots of it is a luxury, but our family life runs much better for having her.

We just have a cleaner but we are both retired and like to do the garden ourselves

I’m increasing my hours soon and we’ve been talking about outsourcing ironing which is what we used to do when we both worked full time.

However the company we used to use has gone bust! Apparently a huge drop in demand after covid as people don’t need as many smart clothes now.

How did you find your housekeeper and can I ask how much it costs? I’d love one but doesn’t seem to be the done thing here

I outsource my ironing and have hello fresh delivered.
I never knew part time house keeping was an option - what do they do?

Also curious about this. We have a cleaner, but a housekeeper sounds amazing

Cleaner (looking for new one now and can’t get for love nor money), ironing (dh work shirts) hedge cutting, window cleaning. Live in a large fairly normal semi in a town.

love the gardening and it’s fairly small so do that myself.

Cleaner - I hate cleaning and would give up a lot of other things before giving that service up
Hedge trimming - very expensive, but the ones at the back are too tall and need professionals in
Window cleaner - cheap enough and would be a massive faff and inconvenience if I had to do it myself

I also don’t do any DIY, I get tradesmen in for everything.

Wow, housekeeper!! I work a 45+ hour a week job with commute to London, DH also works full time. 2 children. The limit of my outsourcing is my food being delivered rather than doing to the supermarket.

Would love a cleaner or housekeeper but ultimately if it's a choice between that or being able to retire one day before I'm 100, it's retiring that wins....

We’re also semi-rural. We only have a Chimney Sweep, who visits us once a year. When we saw him in September, he said he’s never had so much work as people are reinstating their fires. This is definitely an area people shouldn’t skimp on as it invalidates your house insurance should a claim arise from a chimney fire related claim.

I do agree though about other services suffering in an economic downturn, such as cleaners/gardeners. People will start doing it themselves.

We have a cleaner for 3 hours per week, a window cleaner once a month, and in spring we'll need a gardener to tackle the overgrown garden (bought a probate property which has been neglected for years), if we can still afford to do that.

Cleaner.
Gardener.
Dog walker/minder.

I don’t consider a chimney sweep to be in the same category as it’s not a job I could do myself.

we don’t outsource anything - but we also live in a small 2-bed flat with no kids, no garden and no chimney! Id definitely consider a cleaner when we move to a bigger house, just a few hours for the kitchen and bathrooms. But I worked as a nanny before, and they had a cleaner/housekeeper for 2 whole days a week!!

I agree about a chimney sweep not being the same, it is similar to getting an electrician in or gas engineer .

I’ve a nanny housekeeper, she’s absolutely amazing. We’ve had her full time for 8 years. We needed the childcare anyway but she herself made the role more like a housekeeper. She just arrives and keeps busy till the end of the day. Anything she sees that I would have done she does around minding the kids. They’re now all in school so she does more housekeeping than before but she always managed to keep the house running even when we had preschoolers.

I also have a man to do our lawns every 2 weeks during summer and a handyman who does a day of jobs a few times a year.

We are incredibly lucky just simply with our nanny’s personality, she changed everything with being so good at running our house as well as minding the kids. Other people pay more for just childcare but she does everything else too.

Cleaner 2 hours every week, dog walker once a week to take the dog for a free run at their premises.

When I remember/think it needs doing I get people in to clean the oven, clean the windows/gutters, and valet the car.

Less in the outsourcing but more in the convenience category, we have HelloFresh every so often, do online grocery shopping, and have a number of products on subscription (like dog food, loo roll).

Cleaner
Window cleaner
Dog Walker

Not in the UK but we have a full time housekeeper. She was our nanny when the kids were younger. She basically runs the house, cooks when needed, shuttles kids around, looks after the dogs, cleans, washes. We don't need her now that the kids are old enough to be left on their own but she makes our lives far easier. She has been with us a long time and basically has a job with us now until she chooses to leave (unless our circumstances change, and even then we'd try to avoid making her redundant because she needs the money). It is absolutely a luxury and one I'm very grateful to be able to afford.

Give her a payrise! 😀