Over my 10+ years as a stay-at-home mom, then turned working-from-home mom, I’ve discovered a bunch of household tasks that I can outsource to help give myself a little more time back into my days.
Outsourcing household tasks has also become so much easier over the years with newer technologies and, unfortunately but also fortunately, the stay-at-home orders from the pandemic.
This has become something that I have unknowingly implemented over time in an effort to save my sanity having to wrangle kids for errand running. Which is just a win in my book.
Here’s a list of all the household tasks that I outsource:
Buying Pet Food & Supplies
When we got the new puppies last Christmas, I knew I didn’t want to have to be constantly running to get toys and food for them. I immediately setup a recurring Chewy order of food for them that is delivered automatically every 8 weeks. Then if there is anything else I want to get them, I just shop for it and add it to the next auto order and it’s delivered with the food.
I purchased their crates, toys, bedding, and everything else from an app on my phone and just set it up for auto delivery.
Grocery Shopping (Pickup & Delivery)
I have never been a fan of grocery shopping. I make a list, go get the list, and come home. However, my husband loves grocery shopping. He’ll go to the grocery store and browse the aisles like women go clothes shopping… haha! But… he doesn’t go grocery shopping all that often so I’m still in charge of most of the food for the family.
We signed up for a Walmart Plus membership recently and I love it. I get all my groceries delivered for free or I’ll schedule it for pickup. We also do pickup from our local Kroger and Tom Thumb when we need specialty items that Walmart doesn’t have. Now I just need Costco to do pickup or delivery and we’ll be golden!
Taking Clothes to the Cleaners
When I redid my closet last year, I decided to build in an AirDresser. My husband wears lots of dress clothes and the dry cleaning bill just seemed to keep getting larger and larger. Once I bought the AirDresser, our dry cleaning bill is basically nonexistent and my husband has fresh clean clothes right after he wears them instead of waiting weeks or months to get them back (depending on how long it takes me to drop them off and pick them up… haha). He just pops his suit in and steams it as soon as he’s done wearing it.
Deep Cleaning
As a busy, working household, we are juggling a lot of things during the weeks. Which makes the weekends usually the only time I have to get the house cleaned. However, it’s also the time when I don’t want to clean my house because it’s my weekend too and I don’t want to spend all weekend cleaning.
Quite a few years ago we invested in house cleaning and have had a house keeper ever since. They are amazing and come every other week to keep my floors and toilets shiny. They also do all the other deep cleaning things that I don’t love to do like the baseboards, blinds, dusting, etc.
Lawncare & Maintenance
Texas summers are hot and for the first year we lived here I mowed our lawn every other week. It was brutal. After that first summer of doing it all myself I decided to hire this out as well. It used to take me a good hour plus to mow our lawn and the guys get it done in less than 30 minutes. Plus, now it’s a chore that I don’t dread coming up every week anymore.
Taxes & Wealth Management
I had done our taxes for years trying to save some money but after our financial goals changed we needed someone to help guide us. Now we have a team of people that help guide us toward a (hopefully) wealthy future and also do our taxes for us at the end of the year. They’re able to make money for us while we’re also making money for us.
Paying Bills
Every single one of my bills is on autopay. Some places give you a discount for enrolling in auto pay but it also makes sure that you’re never late on your monthly bills. We still make a budget every month so we know how much money to put towards those bills and then they’re paid automatically. This frees up so much time during the week trying to organize and pay all the bills.
