Bringing it Home: Outsource Your Fall To-Do List

don't tell me it's not what I'm trying for you can't tell me it's not what I'm trying for you know the truth everything I do I do it for you Brian Adams everything I do I do it for you you remember this song oh my goodness brings back a lot of memories I know oh my goodness well you know I'm bringing it home we do like to reminisce sometimes music means something to us yes I like went back to the mid-90s at the skating drink on Friday night that would be one of those couples and backwards skaters we were going to the same skating rink but uh yes I do I remember the couples and backwards skaters only and Brian Adams that is like so funny I'm totally back in middle school well everything that I do I do it for you and you know fall is coming up um like it's a national holiday for me it's on Sunday it's coming up well it gets busy in the summer there's a lot of things to do well in the fall too you're still a summer girl but like school's been back in for about six weeks but you know it's a good time for us to really protect our mental health because we are moving in the fall eventually uh thanksgiving and then you know the holidays it's a busy time and you're wrapping up the year you're trying to get stuff done yeah we're gonna have reports you know people that work in certain industries are gonna be doing things so it's a good time to protect our mental health and we can do that by trying to outsource some of those tasks and responsibilities that we have that may increase as the holidays approach yeah which means your stress level your stress level is already going to increase and you know sometimes you get resentful about having to do things oh do I do you know so it can help you like reduce the burnout reduce the resentment make more time to do the things you want to do spend time with your family and friends now that's important you know the holidays are supposed to be about family and friends and you have so many tasks that you resist them but you don't get to connect the way you like right and sometimes we set the bar so high that we don't attain it and then we kind of feel like we've let down people in ourselves so you know we want people to face the end of the year here these fun months are full of so much fun and joy and family and friend time we want people to face that with a positive attitude and a good outlook on what you can and can't do you know so we're actually looking at some things that you can outsource meaning you can get somebody else to do it for you okay girl let me pick it off here yeah so here's the thing choosing hotels and restaurants a lot of people are traveling right even if it's just a couple of towns over whatever and you may not be staying with your relatives you know there may not be space so instead of you trying to go through and figure all these things out there are websites and i'll just name one of them trip advisor because i happen to be on that one that you can put in any city that you are going to and it will pull up the top rank of everything you can look on hotels and restaurants and all this then you can go through and start to read about them okay you know so i always i never go to a hotel i don't choose a hotel without checking it out right and let me tell you i'm not alone because trip advisor has about 463 million visitors each month that go there and people are really traveling oh we need to find out about these places and um there are about 859 million reviews on there and 8.6 million places wow those can be restaurants they can be uh activities everything so let somebody else do it and this is free so you can set up anything to you know review those things don't spend time going to all these other places find uh the website that you enjoy or the app that you enjoy and look at that way that's a great idea and then you won't go into it blind pull up at the hotel and keep driving yeah okay so i know this is something the second thing that we can kind of outsource is something that you do sometimes but shopping for groceries and household goods has dramatically changed i do that all the time yes so some statistics on this one from july of 2023 to this past july of 2024 more than half of americans had their groceries delivered now have you ever done that i have not had my groceries delivered but i know people that do yeah yeah i'm in that number definitely because yeah i have groceries delivered and sometimes i pick them up same concept i guess uh still outsourcing because somebody's going to pick right uh what i've said so yeah you know instacart is a popular um service and it has over 13 million users and it has grown over 25 percent since 2021 you know i think it's important for people to know that services like instacart it's not grocery delivery services they have so many other places on there they have the dollar type stores they've got the do-it-yourself hardware stores they've got i mean everything is on instacart now and that's new so that would be an easy thing you could outsource if you've got a lot of errands to run maybe you could outsource one or two of them and have it brought to you that's true yeah that would be good and you know sometimes if you already pay for some of the some store services the delivery fee is free so that may be something to consider yeah and i mean i'll just put this out there if there are people that have the walmart plus uh they have common free delivery so if you've got it so that you can order things for shipping it also gives you free grocery delivery so just think about it even if you just want to do it during the holiday when you're going to have like large grocery loads and nobody to help you unload them then that might be the time that you want to order them so they'll bring them yourself i'm thinking because we're in the midst of soccer season and my son has got a bunch of after-school activities it's hard to make time to get to the grocery store your groceries can meet at home i have a co-worker who schedules the delivery to come at the time that she gets home yeah that's a wonderful idea all right so that's an easy one yeah it is and you know while people are doing that you can go ahead and get the whole meal delivery uh those meal services yeah where they bring you all of the fresh ingredients and the recipe and deliver it it's safe you know it's cool whatever and then you just make it you don't have to go to the store um it's portion size and you cook it according to the instructions and you can kind of select like different menus too yeah they want to know what you like they're not going to send you stuff that you don't eat it you know right they send stuff that you like so their key demographic is 18 29 year olds and we can kind of understand that they don't have a lot of experience cooking and they may just kind of be starting out they're starting out um yeah this is simple everything is simple to make and it just works into their lifestyle and it's just them so these types of meals would probably be easier for a smaller family like an individual or a couple or something like that but you can take that off of your plate um you know that's one less thing that you have to worry about you don't have to go to the store it's less waste because it is designed just for your size family and just do it for a little while if you want to just take the holiday so like a week of thanksgiving the week of christmas the week of all the holidays yeah i don't have to you know cook for us to eat and then cook for the event so that's something to think about and there are also some places that have like little ready-made meals don't they yeah that's great too casseroles family meal packs i think that's good for individuals it's good for families it's also good if you want to take a meal to somebody oh yeah so there's a lot to that and it beats going through a drive-thru five nights a week oh yeah it's gonna taste better definitely it's almost like you've got a homemade meal waiting for you right here's gonna be more nutritious and it'll probably save some money yeah it will it will so you know that's just something to think about so that you can save your energy for the big meals well on to the next suggestion is it involves cleaning your home okay so last year right last year 10 percent of households across the u.s paid a professional service for cleaning okay that does not that much no but that does not include private individuals oh so if you know someone in your community that cleans houses yeah oh yeah i know that number's gonna be much higher because that's just like the services that send people out to clean the house right yeah a lot of communities offer have businesses that offer this and even if it's like a one-time thing or you know i just need like you're saying the next few months are really busy if i can get somebody once a month like i can do some of this i just need a little help in the meantime and what i think is so interesting about this is that the home cleaning centers of america said that this is the one of the only industries that does not fluctuate with the economy we're gonna find some money to uh to your house you know because if your home is clean and picked up you feel calmer there you know you can go and relax yeah and go back to the resentment part of you don't have to do the big cleaning for everybody to come you will definitely have a better time and won't be as resentful or you may want to schedule a clean up for after everybody leaves yeah i need a before and after so but yeah that's definitely something to outsource now a lot of people do this i've never done this myself but people outsource their laundry yeah i don't know how many of those services we have in the area i'm probably missing out everybody probably does it i don't know about it i think my where i live is kind of unique because we have a huge industry coming in so not a lot of people that are living here very temporarily and several of these businesses have catered to the temporary workers you know um but for the most part i'm not really familiar yeah i would know at all but it happens nationwide because right listen to this though rocker gamble says average american family washes now washes 300 to 390 loads per year and i'm a thousand percent yes i watch at least one load a day so i'm right in there seven loads a week no we don't do seven loads a week at least like you know the weekends if we're home i'll usually do three or four oh my goodness and they also talk about how much we're spending on our supplies to do laundry the average family spends 170 dollars on laundry supplies a year 100 i think that's higher i agree i think that's like or we're above the average maybe we're spending too much on our laundry supplies but no when you think about your detergent you think about um if you do a stain lifter of some sort people do fabric software yeah like their dryer sheets yeah bleach on their white soap right i mean this is an average you know so uh you know a single individual home compared to what you and i are doing you know that's where they get their average though right that's true and you know there are some cleaners that include laundry but there are services that just do laundry you know so you might can negotiate with the people cleaning your house uh that's the service that they offer maybe they can help with some of the laundry or you can just find a laundry center and you trust them to bring all the brands well i can see where this would be a big industry in a really uh metro place you know that maybe people live in a place that doesn't have a washer and dryer that's true or not close to a laundromat right so they there are laundry services that feel that way yeah yeah i can see that so another one's yard work you know if you're a homeowner or even some people that rent or lease homes they have to maintain the yard as part of their agreement you know um it's a lot so about 40 percent of americans use lawn services that's mowing design etc i thought that was a pretty large percentage so i almost have you know close to half uh well i think about my neighborhood not trying to like throw my neighbors out there but there are very i can't think of many that cut their own yards so yeah we have a few i'm talking about just my street but no most people do have a lawn service what's so funny there are different lawn services for everybody so that lets me know that there are a ton of lawn services there are right so great job for a lot of people and uh some summer jobs for kids yeah but yeah we do our own but my husband really enjoys it oh yeah that's like apparently the husband's on the street don't enjoy it that's like he hops on that mower and he's got a little quiet time listening to some music or whatever but yeah i mean but we're getting to leaves pretty soon yeah you're gonna need those chopped and raked so maybe look into getting a service or a teenager or somebody to come yeah and do that that's something i think some of the teens on the block may want to earn a little money and rake you know yeah i'll be able to do the other things for sure okay you know and i'll say i want to transition from yard work because that grass is dying but a lot of these companies that we're talking about switch to home decor like holiday decorating in the winter time they do yes i know several that will they shift from cutting grass and stuff to putting up lights in people's houses and coming back and taking oh yeah the outdoor lights you got like ladders and i mean yeah and the fishes and everything i can't be that i didn't know i would know who to call so i'm glad you brought that up well in our area there are several companies that do this okay but now there are people that will also help your indoor decorating for fall and for winter and it doesn't have to be like an interior decorator or designer or anything we're talking about women well there may be some guys i thought a guy's really good with it but i think he retired now but anyway i think that there are so many that love decorating christmas trees you know these are the people that put up five or six at their house and they want to put up two or three shirts you know and so you can look into that if this is something that stresses you out or you feel like you don't have the know-how to put the colors together and make it look good easily do that this could even be like maybe a college student you know a lot of talented college students or there'll be a high school student that's really good with you know pretty bold or something you know you could engage those people some of those boys up on a ladder and you have to put your lights on your house there you go there you go and as we get closer to christmas people are going to need errands to run so i mean just go to the post office for me could you run do this run do that and i can see teenagers or college students um doing something like this actually know a teenage girl but that's what she does for her really yes she runs errands for her like a couple days a week in the summer she's with her more but then she does it after school during the school year so that's definitely something that can be done you know we're talking about the holidays a lot i think we're kind of getting in that mode here you know but there's professional shoppers there's professional wrappers i know two people in the city where i live that offer wrapping services every holiday so just bring me your gifts and i'll wrap them like they'll tell you like it's this much for this size box and this size box or the bag like they give they put their price list out you make an appointment with them and take your gifts and they handle it for you so it's not everybody likes to wrap or shop i happen to like to do both but you know not everybody does or you just kind of run out of time yeah that's true that's true when there are people that work odd hours or work a lot of hours or whatever the case is and just need this done now there's one more service that i want to make sure everybody knows about and um that's car washing because you know we're used to going to a car wash maybe and some people doing it now there are multiple services a lot of them they will come they've got everything with them and they'll pull up at your home your office wherever and wash your video inside and out yes there's even a young man in the community i love if you drop leave your keys in your car he'll come to your office get your car take it back to his shop and then bring it back to you sparkly clean so you know just look for people you know talk to people you know and get recommendations from people they know that do the service so what we need to do now honestly listeners and to know you and i together we need to really decide if it's something we can afford to do because it may save us time because we want to like delegate but we may not be able to afford it so we don't need to put ourselves in a bind just to save a little time you know what i'm saying yes we got to be realistic about it okay we also then need to prioritize which one i could like i actually need you know and then which ones i really want because i think it could actually be a need for somebody oh yeah like maybe yard work there's a person alone or just not physically able to get out and do it yard work could be a need so i think cleaning the same and i also feel like the the delivery from the local store that could be helpful if you're in a place where you can't drive at the moment and get out right so look at that then compare prices because there's multiple ways to go about this and companies to use and then choose one that you trust maybe like you hopped on and read all those uh reviews yeah do that you know you know just use these services when it makes sense to do it not just because it sounds fun and then you know we talked about some of these we could get a non-professional to do it you know like raking the leaves like uh going to run the errands or you know doing something like that you know you could save money by hiring a team who you know otherwise we'd have money or a college student who's just looking for a little something not a full-time job so yeah i think there are ways that we can maybe afford to do at least one of these this fall service it is and it's gonna be great and fun but we want to enjoy the time that we've got so definitely you know consider these as you begin to schedule your the rest of your year i think this was fun i got some ideas for things that i'm not gonna do anymore what about you well i'm ready to take a trip so let's well okay well thank you all for joining us today and in the words of Mr. Bob Marley live the life you love and love the life you live take care everybody