Outsource Your Holiday to-Do List and Relax This Year
The holidays are here, and with them comes holiday stress. Almost everyone in the US admits to feeling stressed during the holiday season, and while financial concerns play a big role in this, people also blame holiday-related hassles such as gift shopping , gift wrapping, gift delivery and house cleaning. in shape for all these guests. Let’s face it: It’s hard to feel the holiday spirit when the next few weeks are filled with endless work.
The solution, if you can handle it, is to outsource as much as possible. Paying other people to do all those tedious holiday tasks gives you the most valuable gift: time. Organizing your holiday parties may be the most obvious (and common) way to snatch some sanity and free time from the black hole of the holiday season, but there is a surprisingly long list of holiday chores you can outsource.
House cleaning
If you don’t already have a cleaning service to give your home a semblance of cleanliness, consider hiring one for a short period of time. Most home cleaning services will be happy to schedule a one-time appointment, and some (like Merry Maids ) offer special holiday packages that include multiple appointments and focus on getting your home ready for guests and visitors. Even with the average daily rate for a cleaning lady being several hundred dollars, the investment is well worth it.
Gift wrapping
People hate wrapping gifts . Even if you’re good at it, it’s a boring task with the risk of paper cuts and possibly insanity. The longer your holiday shopping list, the more packaging required—so why not hire someone to wrap all those gifts for you? It can be as simple and as futile as asking a friend or neighbor who makes gift wrapping easy to accommodate your wrapping needs in exchange for a fee or service. Otherwise, you can find someone on a service like Taskrabbit , or turn to a professional service like Nifty Package ( Wrappily maintains a directory of “Gift Wrapping Artists” that you can also search). Most professional gift wrappers offer pickup and delivery as part of the deal.
Buying gifts
To wrap a gift, you need to buy it first—and that first involves the mental and emotional energy of coming up with gifts for everyone on your list. The good news is that you can hire someone to do the shopping for you , and they can even advise you on what to gift some or even all of the people on your list. They then go out, pick up the items, and usually handle packaging and shipping as well.
It’s certainly expensive—around $120-$200 an hour —but if it’s worth it, places like Poppy Gifting will handle the entire gifting business for you.
Light and decorations
Decorating your home for the holidays is a lot of work and can be very stressful, especially if you’re in an area where there’s some competition around traditions. This is a great opportunity to outsource housework—you can hire people (or a company like Home Depot ) to hang the lights, decorate the house , and even get and deliver the Christmas tree right to your door . Considering that one recent study found that people spend an average of one full week decorating their home, this could be a lifesaver.
Holiday cards
Holiday cards are a sweet, analogue tradition from nobler times. But writing out holiday cards, stuffing them into envelopes, and then writing and adding postage to them is a lot of work. On the other hand, outsourcing this work is very easy. A wide range of companies offer this service, including Postable , Snapfish , and even Walgreens — just design your cards, send them your addresses, and they’ll do the rest.
Assembling gifts/toys
If some of the gifts on your list require assembly and you want them to be ready to go as soon as the box is opened, you can either waste hours of your life trying to do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you . for you. Companies like LoadUp offer toy assembly services, so people will come to your home and put it all together for you, or even set up gaming consoles so kids can jump straight into multiplayer play while the wrapping paper is still floating in the air.
Line waiters
If you have several items on your shopping list that have gone viral and are in short supply, you may find yourself waiting in long lines for a long time, making party planning and other holiday events difficult. Hiring people to wait in line has become an entire industry , but if you consider the value of your own time, it’s worth it – you get the toy/tickets/sneakers your loved one absolutely needs without spending any effort on it. hours of your life to stand idle.