Outsourcing your life
Local businesses are taking on the tasks we can't get done
(article exerpt.)
BY KEIKO MORRIS
Newsday Staff Writer
May 28, 2006
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The idea of outsourcing housework has moved beyond the realm of the wealthy. Professionals, primarily those in the middle class, are weighing issues of time, money and sanity as they decide that paying others to take care of at least some of those household chores is worth the price.
And a growing selection of businesses is ready to help.
Since the '90s, there has been a steady proliferation of businesses offering to run errands, fetch dry cleaning and prescriptions, wait at home for the phone technician or delivery person, organize garages and closets, play with the dog, shop for groceries, cook the week's meals and even provide a morning workout at home.
Such outsourcing of one segment of domestic life has paralleled the increase in two-career households -- a circumstance in which "you simultaneously get more income and traditional roles are no longer played to a certain extent," said Eric Abrahamson, a professor of management at Columbia University who, with David H. Freedman, is co-authoring "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place."
A tremendous industry
To illustrate the trend, Abrahamson points to the growth of professional organizers as a phenomenon suggesting there's enough critical mass to fuel a tremendous industry. Membership in the National Association of Professional Organizers, founded with five members in 1985, is approaching 4,000 this year. Abrahamson said consumers do the math -- calculating their hourly wage and how much it costs to pay someone else to do the job -- and, in a strong economy, they're finding that it's cheaper to outsource such tasks.
Census figures bolster his argument: The number of married couples in which both spouses worked full time throughout the year increased from 13,656,000 in 1990 to 17,484,000 in 2004.
Beyond professional organizers, personal grocery shoppers and errand runners have been among the staples of personal services that tend to life's inconveniences and the chores many view as drudgery.
"It's become a service world where they look for someone to walk their dog, feed the cat and the same thing with laundry or dry cleaning, because either they are working or wrapped up taking their kid to Mommy and Me or some sort of art class or singing or whatever," Amplo said. "The little bit of time they have, they are cherishing it more now."
For 6 1/2 years, Pamela Fosella, who runs Out-N-About Errand Service, 631-697-2959, www-out-n.about.net , in Huntington, has carved out a full-time business: She said she will do just about any errand -- as long as it's legal -- from picking up dry cleaning or prescriptions to entering data.
"People call up and say, 'I'm going to be late, can you let the dog out?' Or, 'Pottery Barn is coming between 1 and 3 -- can you be there?'" said Fosella, who serves an area from Laurel Hollow and Cold Spring Harbor across Huntington and into Northport. "I can do your bills. I meet the plumber. I'm just trying to make it easier. That's the whole goal."
Fosella's success is no surprise to one of her clients, Ronen Yaari, a father of three who runs a boutique online marketing firm from his home. Yaari, whose wife, Elizabeth, is an artist, says it's easy to see the benefits of paying others to deal with household activities. And though he also is a carpenter and capable of tackling home improvement projects, he said he would be inclined to hire contractors to do such projects as painting the house or fixing the deck.
"How do you spend your time? That's the most important question you need to ask yourself, period," he said. "If your personal values are that you want to spend time creating amazing art that's going to change the world, or I want to spend time with my family, and you weigh that with the many trips to Home Depot, you realize you can outsource your chores, spend more time with family and work so you can make more money to pay the contractors."
For Anna Miller, the task of organizing and eliminating clutter was so overwhelming and distasteful that, after she returned from graduate school in Maryland, she left boxes of her belongings in her mother's Glen Head living room for five years. Miller, 38, a special-education instructor, continued to accumulate more items, like silverware, even though she knew she had a good set tucked somewhere among the heap of boxes. She finally found HMG Organizing, a service run by Heidi Gaumet, 37, in Bellport.
"I bought really nice expensive silverware from Williams-Sonoma," Miller said. "I wanted it and couldn't find it, and I would go to Target and buy cheap stuff." She said when she couldn't quickly find her teaching supplies, "I would wind up buying more books."
Overextended lifestyles are to blame in part, Gaumet said. (Of course, compulsive shopping and hoarding can play a role, too.)
"It's one of those things," Gaumet said. "For busy people, this falls to the bottom of their priority list when they don't realize that being organized would make their lives more easy and stress free."
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