Time Famine
My friend has been trying to get me to use a grocery shopping service where you order what you need online and they deliver it to your door. It sounds lovely in the sense that I could “shop” at 6 am before the store technically opens and have the errand off my plate for the rest of the day. It sounds awful in the sense that I am a control freak and need to hold each item and decide whether it feels like the “right” box of cereal or a cucumber that will feel correct in my sandwich.
(Don’t worry if you’re annoyed with me right now. I annoy myself, too!)
There is this idea in sociology of time famine; having too much to do and not enough hours to do it. I am currently in a time famine due to the B’nai Mitzvah, and I know once we’re a few weeks out from this life-cycle event, things will return to a normal pace. It feels like it has consumed every free second in our lives for the last six months. Even when I’m not doing something for it, I’m thinking about it.
The solution to a time famine is to put resources towards time-saving measures. Spending money to buy time. If you were sick, you’d pay for a visit to the doctor. If you were hungry, you’d pay for food at a grocery store. Yet while I see the logic, something stops me from spending money to buy time. Hiring out what I can hire out so I can apply my time for something else, even if that something else is a half hour of down time.
It’s not like you need to have a lot of money in order to hire out something time-consuming. But an article I found on time famine stated:
“In Vancouver, where we ran our main experimental study, we asked 98 working adults, if we gave you $40 to spend on the weekend, what would you do with it?” she said. “Only 2% reported that they would spend the money in a way that we would classify as being time-saving.”
It would never occur to me to spend the money on something time-saving. I’d buy a book. I’d go to the movies. I’d spend it on a new pair of jeans. But I wouldn’t think to put it towards a grocery delivery service, laundry service, or cleaning crew. Even though those things make more sense considering I don’t really have time for a book or movie right now. (I always have time for jeans.)
I’m not someone who needs a high level of time affluence. I like being busy, and I’m not very good with down time. I am a project-oriented person; the moment we close out the last of the B’nai Mitzvah stuff, I’ll take on something new as a focus. But there is a point between time famine and time surfeit when you’re just time satiated. You have just enough time; not an uncomfortable amount in either direction.
Do you pay for time-saving services, and which ones do you think are actually worth it?
13 comments
We have this discussion all the time in our house. My husband complains about mowing the lawn. I tell him to hire a service. My husband complains that I never clean anything (untrue, I just don’t do it as much or as often as he does); I say “get a cleaning service.” My husband complains about washing the dishes – I load the dishwasher (we do a lot of hand washing, but I am far more likely to put stuff in the dishwasher). My husband says he wants to move the TV above the fireplace, which will require a new mantel and some tile removal. I say, “Let’s hire someone!” I’m all for hiring out the jobs I don’t want to do. It wouldn’t occur to me to spend one-time bonus money on it, though.
This is a discussion I have often with my husband. We do not pay for time saving services. He was raised by a father who insists on doing everything himself (so that it is to his exact specifications) no matter the time cost as that is not as important as the process. My parents were and are the opposite. Time and stress relief are more valuable. Growing up we had a cleaning service and I realize now how important that was to the sanity of my family, most of all my mother. Though we do not pay for time saving services on a regular basis I do encourage my husband to look at the cost of doing every single project himself – if he is missing time with our girls, it’s not a debate. He will outsource the oil changes or window repairs. I think it’s a start. (However I would definitely buy books, or jeans or new shoes with the $40 and clean the bathrooms or do the grocery shopping myself every time.)
And I am totally with you on the shopping – I need to pick my own food, especially produce.
Well, I paid to have the car detailed, rather than clean it myself, so yes. And we eat out quite often. But not regular cleaning or landscaping services. I certainly spend more money so I can spend less time on things. I don’t shop for bargains because of the time and mental commitment. I may go to a store with higher prices because I’ll get good service and it’s not overly busy/ frustrating and so doesn’t make me frazzled.
Also I might be weird but I’m not into online shopping for anything really. Maybe like you and your cucumbers, I want to have a connection with what I buy and people who sell it. Internet doesn’t do that for me.
The title is my life summed up in 2 words.
Like you, I need to see/touch the produce.
We don’t hire people, I disagree it’s not expensive to hire people for things around the house–unless you’re getting people at Home Depot or not paying payroll taxes etc etc. that’s what prevents me from getting cleaning help–I want to hire from an agency who does all that and they’re expensive.
We have lawn guys… it takes them 45 minutes to do more than I can do in 3 hours (I don’t have an edger, they do). We also have a HelloFresh subscription so I don’t have to think up (and shop for) 3 dinners a week. I’ve thought about a cleaning service, but the stress of the pre-cleaning always stops me.
Oh my goodness, if I didn’t pay for time-saving services, I would have had a nervous breakdown long ago! Between a demanding full-time job (with a spouse who also works full-time) and my twin sons, I have very little free time as it is. I have to spend *some* of that free time doing things that I enjoy, or that restore me physically and mentally, or I couldn’t keep going.
I have monthly house-cleaning service (would love to bump it up to every two weeks); I sometimes get food delivery (Blue Apron or Hello Fresh); I do the majority of my shopping for clothing and household items online (thanks, Amazon); and yes, I have used the grocery service where they shop for you and you just pick up the groceries. (Unlike you, I don’t need to personally select each item; I just need the required items to be in my pantry and refrigerator when they are needed.)
Honestly, I would outsource more things if I could! LOL
When we lived in the UK for four months in 2012 we were living in a little village outside of a larger town centre. There was no grocery store in the village and we didn’t have access to a car. We did almost all of our grocery shopping through Ocado- you shop online and then you choose your delivery window (which is only an hour long, so no waiting around forever). You can start an order and keep adding to it up until quite a short time before the order actually arrives. It was AMAZING. I still miss it. It wasn’t at all good for impulse shopping but we always plan a menu and work from a list so it worked well for us. On the rare occasion where an egg was cracked or the spinach was wilted it was easy to get a refund for that product.
If my part of Canada had the ability to do something like that I would be all over it.
I wish we outsourced more (especially house cleaning). The cost always trips me up but I think once both kids are in full-time school and we don’t have the childcare costs hanging over us I’m going to reopen this discussion with Q. I really resent us spending every Saturday morning cleaning the house. I also think our time is very valuable. I read a lot of personal finance blogs and they’re always calculating the costs of a cleaner and showing how much more effective that money would be invested somewhere, but they rarely take into consideration the time vs. money equation.
We’re in the same boat as you: not enough hours in a day to complete all that needs to be done. But I also struggle with spending money on time-saving venues. Part of it is upbringing as there was a period where those services where very expensive and out of budget for most. But there’s also a psychological part of knowing that I can do this job and usually in the way I want it (not trivial by any means).
Where I live costs a lot less than Vancouver, and it costs more than $40 to get the lawn done, and they’re not going to come out on a weekend anyway because they also have lives. (We pay $50/week for mowing/edging in the summer plus a yard clean up at the beginning of the season that is much more expensive.)
We’re already paying for the time saving services we value. We’d need to be a LOT higher income for more since half the hassle is finding and affording good people.
I enjoy grocery shopping.
I’m at the 6 month point before for the mitzvah right now and the amount to do is overwhelming. It doesn’t help that I’m soooo busy at work I could scream, and I’ve also decided I need to excercise all the time (I don’t know either). I will pay anyone to do anything they want if it means I have more time.
My sister (in Winnipeg) has started using an online grocery shopping service… she can order from home & pick it up later for a very modest fee. She loathes grocery shopping and says it`s entirely worth it not to have to stand in endless checkout lines. Dh loves grocery shopping (I don`t mind it) and I would certainly want to pick out my own produce & meat & the like.
I was very much in favour of getting a housecleaning service when we were working and had the house… dh did not like the idea of `strangers`in the house, cleaning up OUR messes — and what would his family sayÉÉ (I don`t know why my keyboard suddenly won`t type question marks…!!). Somehow the subject came up at a family gathering… it turned out that all the women thought a housecleaner would be a great idea & all the men didn`t (and guess how much housecleaning they all did themselves, right…!). One woman said her husband told her, `That`s money we could be spending on our daughter,`and she said `Yeah, but it`s also TIME we could be spending with her too!`
I tried to convince dh to outsource mowing the lawn & shovelling the snow because he clearly hated doing it, but he didn`t like that idea either. Luckily, that now gets done for us, living in a condo. 🙂
I am so with you on the grocery delivery — I have friends who have tried it and love it, but I can’t imagine not picking things out myself. Who will check the expiration dates? Who will choose the right honeycrisps, or Spanish onions, or avocados? No thank you. I am interested in things like Blue Apron though, because I’ve seen the quality of the produce from my neighbor and it’s a thing of beauty, and maybe I’d try some new things.
I have been dying for a cleaning lady. Bryce is good at hiring out time — we now have someone who mows the lawn and takes care of leaves, and I did hire someone to do the pruning (partly because I didn’t want to do it and partly because I’m pretty sure my pruning is NOT the best way), but I am still stuck with a house to clean and I would love to free up that time. Although I did just clean all my windows with this crazy microfiber cloth set and they are SPARKLING and I feel accomplishment in having done it myself.
I guess the control thing runs deep. But I would love someone to come mop my floors and dust my baseboards and ceiling corners. I don’t need to control that. 🙂