Is paying a handyman for simple household jobs now common practice?

[HumbleHun]

Has a anyone ever paid a handy man to change spotlight bulbs? All my friends pay this young chap to change bulbs, jet wash their drives, clean the oven etc but my DH does all this but apparently it is common practice in my village to pay for these services. I'm tempted in a keeping up with Jones sense but DH says it's ridiculous. Is this a common thing now?

Yes, it's more common, But then it's more common to have a cleaner/pay someone to look after your kids/get take out than in the past.
People are more likely not to have a SAHP, less free time, and there's fewer jobs so it makes sense for tradespeople to offer these services.

You say this, but my best mates husband went to put up a shelf and drilled through all the wires of their electric shower. An awful lot of people find the simple jobs difficult because they don’t know what they’re doing and there’s almost too many tutorials etc online that they become overwhelmed.

The only way I found I learnt was by having a crack at it and seeing what seemed right and then calling my dad if anything really baffled me. But lots of people don’t have a dad in trades or any common sense or any natural handiness.

Interesting question.

Thinking about it, for me it is about morals and a sense of self. I can very easily afford to have people in to do things in my house, and do if it's electrics, gas, plumbing etc where if you don't have the training there's a risk of serious injury or serious damage to property if it goes wrong.

My father was an intellectual man but also excellent at DIY. He installed in all his children( all girls) the ability to use a drill and be able to do basic DIY. My mother did all the painting and they both did all the gardening in their very large garden. My mother, now a widow at 89, still goes up ladders to prune trees, cuts hedges and does all her gardening. She is very well off but only gets people to do things if she can't physically do it herself.

For myself I would almost view it as a moral failing if I am capable of doing a job round the house yet choose to pay someone else to do it. I simply could not abide to see someone cleaning my oven or changing my lightbulbs, or painting my walls, or mowing my lawn, I would feel like I'd almost failed at life. The only circumstances in which I would pay would be if I was physically incapable of doing those jobs.

I have to admit I also do feel like people who are capable yet don't do basic jobs round the house like oven cleaning, changing lightbulbs, mowing the lawn, are lacking in moral fibre and are really rather useless.

Love the faux puzzled MN use of 'surely' when it's very obvious OP is talking about just changing the bulbs. Also the sneaky dig at young un's when by OP's reference to her loaded neighbours 'nice young man' handyman and traditional housework division that she's certainly not a Gen Z/millennial.

But don't let reading comprehension get in the way of your stereotypes.

If you can afford it I think it’s good to pay someone else to do DIY and other household stuff. Helps give local people jobs and puts money into the economy.

That's a very rational response.

I don't feel bad about putting money into someone else's pocket for things I'm not good at and would have to do instead of leisure time. I felt more enthusiastic when I first got a house of my own, but a few decades and several houses on, I've lost motivation especially as DH does very little of it. He can jolly well apply some money instead!

I do the oven and the jet washing. Husband does the spotlights. We don’t hire a handyman for very much at all - plastering if it’s a large area, tree felling if it’s larger than we think we can cope with. Most things we do ourselves.

I have hired someone to do the oven when I really didn’t have capacity to do it and I wanted it done before Christmas. But normally I’ll do it myself.

Whilst I agree, it's hard to find reliable/good tradespeople, which is why we tend to buy tools/equipment and do things ourselves unless it's something that requires someone qualified like an electrician or heating engineer.

When we find a decent tradesperson, we will use them, even for small jobs we "could" do ourselves, but they're as rare as hen's teeth and our experience is that they soon give up to get a job elsewhere, or emigrate!! Over the past few decades, we've had a couple of excellent plumbers, but both retired, and we had a brilliant electrician who emigrated! The latest was a joiner/carpenter who we used to replace our windows, all internal doors, made us a couple of cabinets (one for the boiler cupboard), replaced our decking - we even got him to do small jobs we could have done ourselves, such as wall mounting a TV and replacing a staircase banister, but he gave up and re-trained as a lorry driver!

We've gone through literally dozens of other tradespersons and handymen, but not been happy with any. They either don't turn up, do a crap job, etc. We got a handyman to power wash our drive but he basically just spent an hour randomly squirting water in no particular pattern/logic and left it a right state.

We've currently found a good plasterer/tile fitter and have used him for all sorts, replaying the tiles in the kitchen, porch and conservatory, replastering a couple of walls that were blown, and replastering around the replacement windows so we didn't need to have the plastic strips. We keep joking with him that we're waiting for the "bad news" day when he tells us he's retiring or emigrating!

When we find a good tradesperson, we actively have a think about what we could bring him back for to do other work to save us doing it.

I used to years ago when I was single. These days I let DP deal with that stuff.

I think a lot of men tend to think that it undermines their manliness if you get another man in to do DIY stuff. I personally don’t give a shit and am just happy to have someone else do it so that I don’t have to.

do you never go out for food then?
Because surely if you are capable of cooking yourself then getting someone else to do it is a sign you are lacking in moral fibre and rather useless?

Where do you buy your vegetables?
Because many people find growing their own very easy, if you aren't capable of doing so and get them from a supermarket, doesn't that make you rather useless?

Did you send your kids to school? Lots of people manage to homeschool their children, if you can't or didn't want to what does that say about your moral fibre, etc?

I mean that's fine as long as manliness includes doing it in a reasonable timescale!

I have a teen I pay to do little jobs I don’t want to, such as weed the garden or jet the patio. He’s 17 and charges £10 an hour and a bottle of pop! It helps me as I don’t want to do them and it gives him a bit of money.

Jesus wept, paying someone to change a bulb. The worlds gone mad.

My partner does 99% of our DIY. Shelves, changing light fixtures, cooker charcoal filters, general repairs, building sheds etc etc. We even sorted a couple of plaster (Big holes in plaster board) issues recently and were delighted with the results. He normally does the jetwashing of the drive but i quite enjoy that so i did it only yesterday myself. I was filthy when finished. Decorating is usually both of us but we paid a family friend to do that because his work is amazing and extremely cheap.

We are planning another project soon and we will both muck in for that.

What a stupid reply.
The OP was about doing small basic jobs around the house, not any activity in the whole world which a person could do themselves. You've extrapolated so much that you've lost any sense.

As a matter of fact I never do eat in chain type or fast food restaurants or basic pub restaurants, because of the very fact I could cook it better myself. I do only go to places where the chef creates food better than I could do at home. Consequently they are expensive and I don't go frequently.

I do grow a lot of my own veg, not all, but plenty.

I totally disagree with home schooling. I could teach a child up to GCSE and A level in some subjects but would never do it as I think it's detrimental to children. I also fully respect that teachers are trained to teach and I am not.

It's always been normal, when do you think 'handyman' became a job?

People often use them because they don't have the tools for a task, rather than they don't have the ability. Better to pay the handyman a few ££ to do a couple of small jobs than bother having to buy equipment you don't particularly want.

That's a lot of words to say 'Oh right, yeah good point I'm a massive hypocrite not to mention unpleasantly judgey and critical.'

OP was asking about things SOME people find easier. To be honest she was being a hypocrite too as she doesn't even do the tasks her neighbours are doing herself, she gets her husband to do them.

Just because you might find painting a wall easy and worth the time/cost, but cooking an elaborate meal hard and not worth it, doesn't mean somebody else doesn't feel the opposite, and their view is equally valid.

You could have just said 'Personally I'd rather do those things myself,' but you started (completely unnecessarily) calling people useless and suggesting not mowing their own lawn was indicative of a moral failing, so it's a bit thin-skinned to start whining when someone throws it back at you.

I paid a plumber to change a 50p seal in my toilet cistern after asking DH to do it for about 6 months. (I haven't got a clue about plumbing and no desire to learn).

And, I pay to get my hedge cut - could do that myself but can't be arsed with the faff.

And, I always get decorators for wall papering as I hate that. Happy to paint stuff myself though.

I wouldn't pay to get light bulbs changed although I might when I'm elderly and ladders become riskier.

You do realise that people can have different opinions about things don't you?

If I think people who don't do small jobs round the house, when they are capable of doing them, are lacking in moral fibre and are a bit useless, how does that matter to those people or to anyone else? Answer- it doesn't. Their lives are unaffected by my opinion.

Therefore I can express that opinion. You seem to be a person that uses the word "judgy" as an insult. I don't view it as such because everyone judges, even if they pretend they don't. After all, in calling me judgy and a hypocrite, you yourself have judged me, as is your right. I'd far rather be called judgy because I express opinions, than being a wishy washy "be kind" type of person.

And if you'd actually read my original comment I actually said that of course people are free to spend their money paying people to do whatever jobs they want