If you are coming from the USA specifically, but really most Western countries – it may seem like a totally foreign concept to have help at home.
Guess what – you’re in a new country now – a great time to get to know foreign concepts!
Help around the house can come in many different forms – here I’m going to look at 3 of them:
- Housekeeping service
- Live-out full time help
- Live-in full time help
First I want to say – having traveled to several countries around the world – I have found it is primarily an American/Western concept to “be self-sufficient and do everything on your own.” I could write pages on why I think that is – but that’s for another day.
For today what matters in this conversation is:
- Many people intentionally work in the domestic field
- Everyone who is working in that field needs a job to pay for their family and lives
- You have the opportunity to employ or contract with people who are looking for work or offering services – and support entire families in so doing
If you’re already sold on “I need help and am willing to get it” – then go ahead and click here to get some recommendations for how to find help that matches your family’s specific needs and stage of life.
If you still need to be convinced – keep reading.
Having help around the house will enable you to:
- Spend more quality time with your kids
- Serve your family and meet their needs on a new level
Imagine this – you finish a long day of work and come home (or come out of your home office) and:
- Dinner is ready
- The laundry is put away
- The kitchen is clean
- Your children are happy
But wait – you’re a stay at home mom – you don’t work from home or outside of the home – and you’re from ‘Merica – you can and should be able to do 100% of all things all the time with a smile on your face.
Yikes. No.
Even (especially) stay at home moms can seriously benefit from an extra set of hands – and dramatically increase their family’s quality of life.
As a mom – there are some things that only you can do for your family, while other things can definitely be delegated.
If you have older kids at home, it’s great for them to learn things like meal prep, laundry, etc. and honestly I recommend exposing them to all of the house things as early as possible. Maybe the 2 year old does not need a set of chefs knives, but she can definitely pull grapes off the bunch, or start counting out crackers onto a napkin and help prepare snacks.
But even so – regardless of the size of your family, and the ages of your kids – you can benefit from help, and also support families in the process.
You can start small – and hire a cleaning service to come anywhere from 3x/week to monthly. I recommend weekly or more, especially if you are getting established in a new country and do not have full time help.
In the USA – I had someone who came once a month to help with cleaning, and it was wonderful – but so so expensive compared to here.
My cleaning service comes weekly and it costs about the same or a little less than having someone come once a week in the USA, and more gets done.
We live in a dusty place. It’s so wonderful to have someone help you with washing the floors and vacuuming and even laundry (yes….laundry. Who knew?!)
Here is just a sampling of the things that you can easily get someone to help you with:
- Laundry, wash/dry/fold
- Ironing
- Changing bedsheets
- Organizing closets
- Meal prep (chopping veggies, etc.)
- Mopping, vacumming
- Cleaning windows
- Cleaning your garden (if you’re not in the UAE yet, this sounds strange…just wait until you get here and you’ll understand)
Imagine if your house was keeping up with one of those neurotic amazing Pinterest checklists of monthly deep cleaning without your direct involvement!
Picture sitting down to read a book with your kids without the laundry shouting at you from the other sofa (#RealTalk).
Dream with me about the kids being in bed and there’s nothing left to clean in the kitchen and no guilt about all the things you should be doing – and you can just recover from the day, spend quality time with your spouse, etc.
There are many different ways to provide for your family – this is a great one.