Im a single parent, and I have a live-out nanny 2 days a week. Currently she takes DS1 to school, looks after DS2 all day, and looks after both of them in the evening until I get home from work. In school holidays she looks after them both all day.
Next September DS2 will start school, so after dropping them both off she'll have 6 hours until she has to pick them up.
Obviously I can't formally reduce her hours because during school holidays I'll still need her all day.
She says that in previous jobs she's done general jobs around the house while kids have been at school, and she's very flexible, happy to do pretty much anything.
The problem is, I'm not great at delegating, and in my experience people never get things quite how I'd want them. For example, the kids toys could do with a massive clear-out, but I wouldn't trust anyone else to know exactly which toys I was happy to get rid of. And supermarket shopping - you can write a detailed list, but no-one else knows exactly what sort of thing you want do they. So the things I'd be happy for her to do are fairly minimal, and wouldn't take long at all.
So, what do other people do? Do you just accept that in order to have before and after school childcare, and childcare in holidays, you have to pay your nanny to do lots of sitting around drinking coffee and reading magazines during the school day?
What have other peoples' experiences been?