I have an idea for a job that I can do out of my home - I call it a Home Helper. It would involve working for other (busy and rich) families, helping them with odd jobs and weekly tasks that they might not have time for. Examples would be:
Seasonal help - Gardening, lawn moving, leaf raking (probably snow shovelling)
Clean dog leavings in the yard
Clean and replenish kitty litter
Sort and store recyclables
Take recycling to bins
Look after your house and pets during vacations
For which I would ask $15/hr.
Does this sound like something anyone would pay for? Anyone have any comments/ideas/input?
Well, people might pay your price for the heavy yard work, providing you can provide some gardening credentials. I doubt they would pay that much for the rest of the stuff you mention, though. Full time childcare only goes for half that price. (Not that childcare workers are well-paid by any means.)
I don’t necessarily agree with cher3. I think a lot has to do with the area of the country you’re in. I pay $12 for the pet sitters to come over for about 1/2 hour each day that I’m out of town. I pay something like $25/hour for housecleaning. So $15/hour for all that other stuff sounds pretty good to me!
It seems to me that around here people who could pay that much have a yard service that includes at least two guys with all the necessary tools and machinery. They also have cleaning people who do all the other things mentioned as well as clean the house and do laundry. However, we are on the Mexican border, so that makes a big difference in the market, I’m sure.
Good point about the market - here in Calgary, my mom works as a part-time housecleaner for $15/hr. Babysitting is about $12/hr (IIRC); the average office job starts at $10/hr (with employer paying extras for you), or a straight $20/hr to a temp agency. I don’t think a straight $15/hr is too much here, but I’ll have to see what other people in this market think.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d pay for someone to come clean the litterbox for me every day, and maybe to take my recycling away for me. It wouldn’t take an hour a day, I don’t think, but I’d probably pay $5 for the 15-20 minutes it takes to do the litterbox.
Thanks for the input - that’s what I need to round out this idea of mine.Kat, I have a cat, too - that’s where I got the idea that people may want to pay someone else to clean the litterbox.
I’ve heard of some people that get paid to go grocery shopping for other people. I don’t know if you’d charge by the hour for that or get paid a percentage of the bill. As to the other things, they sound promising. Good luck!
Hey, Featherlou, I thought you were going to come down here to the Valley of the Sun and join my A-Team! (or F Troop, depending on the day.)
Anyway, your idea, if properly executed, can be very profitable. I don’t know how handy you are with fixing simple household things, but that can be a very good business too. A couple of years ago, my SO’s BIL and I did a lot of home repair on the side, and made a tidy sum. I put together a business plan, came up with a company name and logo, and made some draft ads, in anticipation of getting a small business loan. Things didn’t work out between the BIL and me back then, but for me it’s still a viable plan and a possibility if the company I’m working for ever goes under.
One of of my targets would be retired people, (we have a lot here). In many cases they don’t have the mobility to do some of the physical labor household maintenance requires. I put together a list of things that I would inspect, repair, or replace for a flat fee. A lot of these are very simple tasks, not time consuming, and require low cost parts.
Another target group would be people preparing to sell their house. There is usually a lot of small repairs, and cleaning to be done to bring a house up to A-1 condition.
Toadie, that’s some great input - I never thought of marketing to the elderly who can’t or just don’t want to do things like raking or mowing. We also have a lot of elderly snowbirds here (people who go south every winter), who still need their houses looked after somewhat while they’re gone. That opens up whole new ideas for me.
