Think how easy life would be if we had experts like these at our beck and call any time of the day. Photo: keglife.
Is it wrong to want to outsource significant parts of your life?
When you think about it, we all do it to some extent – childminding, cleaning, cooking, home maintenance, gardening – anything to make life simpler and easier.
In a previous life, we outsourced quite a bit. We had a fabulous, meticulous cleaner, a mower man who made quick work of our steep block and an ironing service who picked up and delivered.
For a short while we even paid the neighbour’s teenager to wheel the garbage bins up and down the steep driveway on the steep block.
Mind you, knowing that the meticulous cleaner was coming the following day would send me into a frenzy of cleaning the night before. I’d tell her not to worry about No 1 son’s bedroom but she rarely listened.
She was the mum of a close friend and I think she just considered we were an extension of that family, so if No 1 son mistimed his arrival home from school and she was still cleaning, he’d cop the same kind of criticism she would dole out to her own grandson. Still, she saved me from harping on him to clean up his room.
I often think I’d like to have a personal assistant to do those fiddly things that I know I have to do but keep procrastinating until I get to the stage where I can’t sleep at night for thinking about all the things I “should” be doing.
There’s a form that’s been gathering dust on my bench for weeks that needs to be posted, but that means I need to be organised enough to get to a post office that’s open on a Saturday.
There’s a small pile of perfectly good clothes that just need minor alterations and that reminds me, I need to drop off to the op shop that larger pile of perfectly good clothes that no longer fit.
We’re heading to the UK later in the year with No 1 favourite son and his fabulous girlfriend.
The trip has been in the making for a few months now, and I must admit that as much I liked the idea of it, the thought of having to prepare (read: organise) for it filled me with dread.
The first big overseas trip we went on was as “chaperones” with No 1 son’s school. Admittedly, chaperoning a dozen 14- and 15-year-old boys through France and Italy isn’t the ideal holiday for most people.
However, not only was it thoroughly organised, but the teacher in charge could speak both languages (the boys were supposed to be using their rudimentary French and Italian) so we didn’t have to worry too much about the language barriers.
Everything was planned and paid for in advance so as long as we knew we had adults in front of the pack and adults at the rear to move along stragglers – and we had the right head count – the trip was a pleasure.
This time round I’m even luckier, apart from not being accompanied by a troupe of teenagers. Not only is No 1’s GF an uber-organised person, she actually loves being uber-organised.
She’s prepared an itinerary for the trip, complete with a checklist of stuff that needs to be done before we go that I wouldn’t even think of until it was too late.
Of course it helps that she is English and our base will be her dad’s village home, but it’s just so reassuring and relaxing to know that someone has taken over the organising so I truly can enjoy the holiday.
Now I just need someone to come in, organise my wardrobe, tell me what else I need to buy for a UK summer and if it’s not pushing the point, pack my suitcase.
I sometimes get to the point that I just don’t want to think about making another decision, so if someone can make it for me, all power to them.
The poor husband can’t work out what he’s done when he innocently asks what I want to watch on telly and I snap like an elastic band.
At least he learnt very early on not to ask what’s for dinner, or at least not to ask until he had thought of options.
Hmmm, thinking of dinner, I reckon we’ll outsource that tonight … but what to have? Help!
