As always, I love reading your blog! Tim and I have had these discussions before. At one point, he considered having a cleaner help us out when we are busy. We discovered that the intrinsic pleasures the everyday. Picking out the groceries, deciding the meals for the week, and making dinner -- all done by Tim because he enjoys these activities the most. I take up the design and organization of the home -- and yes, cleaning with elbow gusto! We do our own laundries. We don't always enjoy all aspects of the work, but we found the division of labour that doesn't suck. Tim really takes pride in his cooking. Where else is he going to hear, "Mmm. This is amazing -- what did you put in it? It's my favourite"? When he notices how clean the house is he'll say, "Did the cleaning gnome visit? Looks great."

Glad to hear that you're outsourcing the accounting. What about the gardening? I wonder if you need a pair of hands -- love gardening!

Indeed. Knowing and being clear of the priority in life is very important. Family and marriage are certainly weighs a lot more than money.

Thanks for the sharing.

Thank god, as like you, I also got a loving and caring hubby, who will love to do house hold works..Mean time, he is taking extra care on parenting also..Many men were not like that in India..!!!

Linda, Susan, Priya: Yeah, totally! =) A good relationship is a wonderful thing, and well worth nurturing.

Linda: I could certainly! Do you grow things from seed, too? We can swap, and maybe you can help me get the hang of growing things. The peas are doing okay, but I'm still waiting for the bitter melon plants to come up. Maybe in fall I'll plant more bulbs so that we can enjoy spring flowers next year.

I've been thinking about whether I should experiment with outsourcing more household chores now, or wait until we need it. If we get to the point of being frazzled and sleep-deprived, that's probably not the best time to introduce something new, hence the potential value of finding a reliable service earlier rather than later - but there are no guarantees they'd be available when we need them, or that we'll be able to anticipate our needs well. Ah, planning and experimentation! =)

I'm similar - I think it's a scanner/polymath thing. Some people really *want* to focus on only one thing, or are only good at a few things so they want to spend their time doing that. Some of us want to do everything, and we actually do most of it pretty well--often better or more efficiently than someone we could hire. Plus we enjoy the variety and thrive on diversification rather than specialization.

The other issue is that anyone you hire you then have to manage. Sometimes it really is easier to do it yourself than to train and manage someone. Those calculations have to take the training and managing time into account--including the mental energy of switching hats into "management" mode.

Areas where I think it makes sense to outsource are entire projects involving skills you don't enjoy, aren't good at, or don't feel like using. For example, I set someone else up to create content for one of my sites--she required minimal management, and it wasn't something I wanted to do myself. But I don't outsource my accounting because I've designed an efficient system that works for me but would be pointless to explain to someone else. Plus I didn't mind reading a (short, well-written) book on accounting to make sure it was set up correctly.

So it varies by person and situation. No rules.

Emma: Oh! That explains a lot. =) I enjoy these other tasks, like baking -- they're a good break from the other things I do. Thanks for sharing your experience. That made things make more sense for me!