5 Things You Can Outsource At Home

Time is precious. If you’re an entrepreneur or have a side hustle, you may be working a lot of hours and trying to figure out how to get more hours in your day.

I once asked a couple of people who seemingly “do it all” how they did in fact do it all. Each one of them own a business (and one of them owns 2), they both have kids and dogs, have beautiful clean homes, manicured front and back yards, and both find time to be social, do fun things, and give back to their community and their friends. They both gave me the exact same response. Any guesses as to what that was?

“I don’t.”

Both hire cleaners for their homes and gardeners for their front and back yards. One hires out for laundry. One has someone completely running their 2nd business. One said “my house never looks like this. The cleaners just left.”

Eye-opening, isn’t it?

You CANNOT do it all. And believe me, I am telling myself this more than I am telling you. In the back of my mind, I think that I still believe that I should be able to do it all. To hear these successful women telling me that you just can’t and even more important, that you don’t HAVE to, that’s show-stopping.

And what I have realized- even if I could do all of those things, it would take up the time that I have to do other things. Important things that only I can do. Money-making things. Relationship-building things.

I completely understand that delegating these requires money and that some people can’t afford it. But what I have seen most commonly is that. “to save money”

What is your time worth? What can you do with those 3 or 4 hours . How much money can you make?

So, if you’re maxed out and don’t have time for those money-making things,

Let’s Get Delegating!

If you’re wondering what work and business-related tasks you can delegate, that’s coming soon.

GROCERY SHOPPING

• Hours saved/month: For once a week shopping, anywhere from 4-6 hours/month
• Investment/Cost: Depends ono which service you use, but you’ll most likely pay an additional $8+ a week for this service.

The pandemic introduced a lot of people to the idea that they can have someone else do their shopping.

Unless I do it on the weekend, I struggle to find a time to do weekly grocery shopping. What ends up happening is that we eat a lot of takeout because I haven’t planned for meals and gone grocery shopiping. That = a lot of money AND a lot of not-so-healthy options.

I now do Instacart.

Here’s a bonus. I find that it helps me save money at the end because the items I purchase are more thought-out vs the impulse shopping that inevitably happens.

LAUNDRY

• Hours saved/month: Depending on number of people, 4-16 hours
• Investment/Cost: approx $50/wk, or $200/month

I recently discovered that I can pay $50 a week to have a laundry fair come pick up 2 bags of laundry every Wednesday and drop them off, clean and folded every Saturday.

Sure, I still have to do laundry. I still wash sheets, towels, and some other clothes (including delicates) at home.

BUT, I’d say that I save a couple of hours a week not having to wash and fold those 2 loads.

HOUSECLEANING

• Hours saved/month
• Investment/Cost: $150-250/month

This one is huge. And costly. But, life-changing.

SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION

Ken and I have always commented on how much time transporting our 2 girls to and from school takes. They’re 4+ years apart, so we only had 1 school year where they were at the same school. The rest of the time we tote them around to 2 schools, either taking turns or each one taking one of them.

This year, one of them rides her bike 3x/week and we carpool the other 2 days.

The other one rides the bus.

It’s a-mazing.

Really. And neither one o these options costs us a penny. Granted, not everyone has a child old enough to ride their bike, a school bus isn’t always available (and if so, isn’t always free). But here’s the thing. I had these opportunities open to me much sooner. Carpooling was always an option, as was the bus. But, I never took them. It seemed like I should be able. Now that I have, it’s life-changing. We are saving about 25 hours a month.

ERRANDS

Pricing can vary, especially by geographical location.

It’s ok not to do it all.

This can come in a few forms. One is to have someone actually run errands for you. I have to admit that I haven’t outsourced any of this yet (unless you call having my husband do it outsourcing?) to an actual person.

The second is to make use of services such as Target ordering + drive-up pick-up and Amazon delivery, etc. I DO utilize both of these services. I cringe a bit when talking about ordering on Amazon. I’d rather buy local, save the packaging, and all of that. So, I am aware of this and strive to do better. I feel like even shopping at Target, although it’s a large corporation, is at least helping the local economy. The ideal would be to purchase hyper-local. And, I am aware and strive to do better. For example, I used to purchase all of my books on Amazon, and now I purchase through my local bookstore, the cozy, friendly, amazing Ruby’s Bookstore in Folsom’s Historic District.

Ok, what do YOU outsource that’s not on this list? Let’s help each other out! Is there anything that you have found to be a huge time-saver?