This thread made it sound like everyone at least has a gardener. I don’t personally know anyone who has a gardener, however, and I was surprised to see how people seemed to take it for granted.
How many people have a staff member to do some personal job, like housekeeping, gardening, pool attendant, manicurist, masseuse, trainer, etc.
Part time or full time?
Define staff?
In-service only
purely personal (not business staff).
communal type arrangements do not count (room and board / wife/husband/kids etc)
you must be physically capable ( but not necessarily as good as a professional) of performing the tasks done by your “servants” (medical attendants or ‘assisted living’ doesnt count for this exercise)
So, I’ll start. I have no full time staff to do my personal jobs for me. Could I afford it? Perhaps. I’d choose this path either way.
As made clear in the other thread, we have a gardener who comes twice a week. We also have a housekeeper who comes twice a week.
What do you mean by “in-service”? Do you mean people who come to our home? We also have a pest control guy the comes by monthly, I guess we could catch the rats and ants ourselves.
Anyway, the tone of your post is more than a little presumptuous. Where do you get that most people in that thread who have gardeners take the service for granted? Do you think we pay them pennies and laugh…LAUGH as they blow our tree debris into their little truck? MWAHAHA! :rolleyes:
I would hardly consider these people servants any more than I’d call the tax guy, the dry cleaner, or the guy at the car wash a “servant”. To me, a servant is a butler or a maid (which IS different from a housekeeper).
I would like to have a housekeeper and lawn service, but I cannot justify the cost.
We could afford to have one or the other comes weekly, but we find the money better spent on other luxuries like college savings, retirement savings, vacations and Yankee Games.
We live comfortably but messily. I am the only neat one in the house and I have hopes for my daughter. My wife is messy and my son is only 5.
**mrrealtime **: Why do you think it would be wrong to provide someone on a lower salary scale an additional job. This would hardly be exploitation. Before we had kids and moved to a more expensive home we had a bi-weekly housekeeper that came and gave the house a good basic cleaning. The money she earned let her spoiler her grandkids a little and she was semi-retired. We had a cleaner house and she had a supplemental income to Social security.
I would call that a win-win. It was a basic service.
I would like to do it again, but I am not comfortable with our cash flow yet. I still need to pave our driveway and replace the other half of our windows. So maybe in 2 years we can either get a weekly house keeper or a weekly lawn service.
Doesn’t it make sense that people with Spanish speaking gardeners would respond to a thread about Spanish speaking gardeners? I often post in “The Amazing Race” threads and everybody who posts in those threads watches “The Amazing Race.” That doesn’t mean that everyone and their cousin watches “The Amazing Race.”
We have a cleaning lady who comes in once a week. I used to have my hair cut in my home by a lady who did a thriving business doing just that. I don’t know if that qualifies as staff or not.
Mrs. Flag & I have a housekeeper come weekly. She works full time plus, and so do I. I have my own business. The more time and energy I can pour into the business instead of doing household chores, the more profitable it is.
My family employs a housekeeper and a chauffeur, and I train with a personal trainer at the gym four times a week. All quite necessary, I think - my mother can’t quite handle the housework on her own; no one trusts my father to drive, and I have no discipline.
Our neighbors have a pool company come and clean their pool. We do it ourselves because it really is no big deal - and our pool always looks better than theirs.
The neighbors on both sides of us have an insect control person come once a month. Again, we realized getting a large sprayer and insecticide is no biggie and we do it when it needs to be done, not according to the calender.
And again, our neighbor has a company come and trim their bushes once a month. Again, not exactly hard work so we do it ourselves. The exercise is good and nice to be in the garden.
I guess the point is, as long as we are healthy and do a better job, what would be the point?
We have considered getting a cleaning person to come and clean the house once a week, but a good cleaning person is hard to find here - and although we bitch about it, we do a good job of keeping the house clean.
So - no staff, but not (necessarily) financial reasons - just practical reasons.
I looked after a toddler AND twin babies (one with a medical condition, oxygen for 4 months, a feeding tube until she was 4 1/2 years old, and for whom I pumped breastmilk for 22 months while caring for all three of the aforementioned children (who all wore cloth diapers))…with no help but my husband. No - I lie. We did have a neighbor’s girl come in for an hour or two once a week to play with the kids.
I do not have “high needs” children, so I did have it easier than some. But it’s absurd to suggest that nobody looks after twin babies without help. You do what you have to do. Sometimes, when people ask you later how you did it, you have no fricking idea because you were too exhausted to think straight. But you still do it, because you don’t have any other choice.
I won’t pretend it wouldn’t’ve been nice to be able to afford a nanny, a mother’s helper, a housekeeper, and somebody to mow the lawn. But we can’t afford that and still pay things like the grocery bill, the water bill, the electricity bill, and the mortgage. But those helpers were luxuries we could not afford. So…we did it ourselves.
Ding! This is me, too. My time, professionally, is worth more per hour than I pay for these tasks (lawn service in particular). It make economic sense to pay someone else. Also note that the lost wages is for the time it would take ME to do the work: they have better tools, more people, and more skill at it than I do – so iI can pay for half an hour, say; for a task that would take me an hour (and cost me an hour’s lost wages.)
Of course, the economic justifications breaks down if I don’t actually USE the extra time to work, but the theory is sound.
You know, it’s not about being physically able to do something. If you work a job like an investment banker or lawyer you might not have a lot of time to garden or clean. My parents used to hire a cleaning lady who would come in once a week or so. Some people I know do the same for their appartments.