Tug-o-broom
Image from PicApp: “Couple Holding Brooms”

Since we did the 60 percent exercise — that is, trying to get our committed monthly expenses closer to that number than to the current 79 percent — we’ve been ping-ponging around what we could cut out of our monthly budget. We’ve hit our first snag over our bimonthly cleaning service.

We hired a cleaning lady probably two years ago now, and it’s been great. Thorough cleaning every other week with all of us out of the house really makes it easier to keep up on in-between cleaning.

But to me, now that my parents are here and the kids are a little older, I see this as low-hanging fruit.

“One of us could take the kids out of the house for two hours every other Saturday or Sunday, go visit Grandma and Grandpa, maybe,” I said, “While one of us cleans.” I volunteered as cleaner.

My husband remains skeptical. With good reason. “Do you remember how (expletive) miserable you were before without this, trying to clean the house?”

I honestly don’t. This is minus one kid and more than 14 months of severe sleep deprivation ago.

He is right that the value we get for this service may not, in fact, be worth giving up in terms of our time. He is right that I may become a total bitchy basket case, and if that were the case, it would be a bad bargain.

I am extremely motivated, however, to save $110 a month and use that money toward other things — savings, clothes, gifts, my business (conferences, associations, and other marketing costs necessary to doing business) a dinner out, what-have-you.

But would my motivation last? Unfortunately we can’t know unless we do it.

If we tried it and it totally sucks, we might not be able to get her back, and at her current rate. I’ve checked out other cleaning services that cost a lot more.

On the other hand, if it works as I imagine it, on the same biweekly schedule, that’s some serious cash. $1,320 over a year’s time.

Of course, this being the Internet age, we could let total strangers decide this for us, in a citizen-style Judge Judy approach, at SideTaker.com. I have been too chicken to even check this out, though.

As my husband said just now when I showed it to him, “Sometimes the internets make me sad.”

So the jury is officially still way out on this.

What do you think?

Meantime, we’ll continue doing some other things we expect to start making a difference soon, like (stop me if these are so you’ve-heard-this-dull):

Committing to grocery shopping only at the lowest-cost stores (and not running to the gourmet, carry-your-bags-out one that is unfortunately closest to our house).

Using coupons.

We’re doing things my mom used to do when we were growing up, like buying those frozen cans of juice and mixing them up in a pitcher. Can you believe we were paying double the price of these things for a carton of the refrigerated stuff?

Man, only a tight cash flow can make the banal seem suddenly so important.

We’ve been selling things on Craigslist and at secondhand stores.

We reuse and recycle a ton.

We’re shopping around more (I’m recommitting to this, actually — I tend to lapse on this habit) for the cheapest gas. (Something my sisters will be glad to hear.)

I’ll be checking on my brother-in-law’s tip about opening some relatively high-interest savings account.

And checking out the Mint.com advisories to switch our credit cards to different ones to cut interest rates.

Want to pass along your favorite frugal tips? We could use ‘em, and it’s good karma…

And people, remember, please no panicking about the larger finanical picture (latest implosion: WaMu).

Some dark humor from the incomparable Patton Oswalt ahem, Stephen Colbert I heard on NPR this morning:

“We are on the brink of financial ruin! Granted, it’s the same brink we were on yesterday, but today it’s a whole lot brinkier!”

No related posts.

Tags:   60 percent solution · sidetaker.com · Stephen Colbert · time value of cleaning10 Comments