The Art of Decluttering

Creative Outsourcing

10.15.2023 - By Amy RevellPlay

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Outsourcing can be a bit daunting when your scope of what it means is that you need to be wealthy enough to employ someone to help you out. However today expand your mind about outsourcing in 3 different ways and think creatively about how you might be able to use the power of outsourcing in your life.

Outsourcing within your householdOutsourcing to independent contractorsCommercial outsourcing

If you live with anyone else, you might just call it 'sharing responsibilities' but if one person cooks dinner and the other washes up, that's outsourcing and making more efficient use of time and resources than both people cooking and cleaning for themselves. If you live with children, you may see it as 'chores' but what you're doing is outsourcing... while also teaching children the skills required for adult life and the value of cooperation and service. If you are carrying the entire mental load of running your household, it might be time to consider what areas can be outsourced.

Then there is what we probably naturally think of as outsourcing, hiring someone to do a task for us. For us, we hire my Dad to cook for us which is outsourcing the decision making and meal planning, shopping, meal prep and cooking. We also pay a gardener to mow our lawns and maintain our yard. We pay a tutor to help one of my sons who has a learning disability and we pay an exercise physiologist to train our family once a week. As we've gotten older and taken on more responsibility in our jobs, we've come to realise we can't do it all and so have strategically bought people onto our team for different seasons. 

And lastly there is commercial outsourcing that we all engage with every day but don't even think about. For instance, I outsource servicing my car. I take this for granted, but only one generation ago it was common for people to service their own cars. I outsource the baking of bread to my local bakery. I could do it myself, but it's more efficient and honestly yummier if I outsource that job to the baker. 

Article from the newspaper mentioned: https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/should-grandparents-be-paid-to-help-out-around-the-house-20230918-p5e5nz.html

You may also like to listen to these episodes: Mental Load Kids Outsourcing Three Times A Day

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