Last week I realized that we had to take down the Christmas lights. I actually like decorating for Christmas, but I loath dismantling it all and boxing it up again. I had two choices.
- Leave them up all year.
- Get someone else to do it.
Ok, I had one choice. I posted the job on TaskRabbit and within a couple of hours I had multiple bids. I reviewed the bidders and the winner was at my house the next day tearing down the Christmas lights for $60.
I think he did a better job than I would have boxing them and he was a very nice retired Microsoftie that just liked taking odd jobs “to meet interesting people and enjoy the outdoors”.
I even consider this a financial gain because of what I did during that time. While my “rabbit” was working I updated our admin stats page on KickoffLabs to give us more insight who our best customers are and how they are doing. I enjoyed the work and I’m sure this knowledge will earn me more than $60 in the next year.
I’d tried this more a few years ago using Craigslist… but never got that far. Managing the “flakes” on Craigslist was too much of a job. Services like TaskRabbit make this smoother by adding reputation and a bidding process.
More outsourcing in 2013
I’m determined to make this work personally and professionally. We already outsource cleaning with a regular maid service, enjoy Amazon grocery delivery, farm delivered produce each week, and have a modern milk man for eggs and dairy.
I’m sure this has benefited our marriage way more than we’ve spent on it in the last few years. And to be honest, most of the delivery prices for food, milk, and local veggies are very reasonable… especially when you factor in trying to take two kids to the store.
Randomly here are some of the next things I’m working to outsource.
- I need to make having virtual assistant(s) work. I think I’m mostly intimidated by the process of finding and training a good one.
- Do less around the house. Every husbands dream right? I’m going to change “honey do” to “honey done” more regularly. Gretchen doesn’t need to know how. 🙂
- Researching our big trip to Ireland to narrow down our options.
- Business research and content generation for KickoffLabs.
- Design or development work that takes me too long, is not the best use of my skills, or something I care to learn.
I have a natural fear that the work won’t be as good as I could do it. That might be true in some cases, but I think I’ll find for that for any job there is someone out there more qualified than I am. I know getting the Christmas lights out next year will be easier than the tangled mess I usually leave.