We pay $17 an hour for someone to tackle our household to-do list — from meal prep to laundry — while we're at work

Many working parents can probably relate to our hectic schedules.

I’m a marketing executive, part-time MBA student, wife, and mom of two young daughters.

My husband is self-employed in construction, real estate, and property management, which means he regularly works 60-hour weeks and answers calls at all hours.

On top of work, our week recently included four doctors’ appointments, gymnastics and art classes for our almost 4-year-old, a family friend’s wedding, and a preschool friend’s birthday party.

Despite all the personal and professional commitments, our family ate healthy meals, our kids had clean clothes, our home stayed organized, our dogs got attention, and our household to-do list got completed.

I even managed to get my hair cut and colored.

My husband and I didn’t magically figure out how to keep all these plates spinning on our own — our success is largely due to our household manager.

We started this arrangement about two years ago after I came across the idea of a household manager on social media.

At the time, I was pregnant with my second daughter, in the middle of my MBA program, renovating a house, preparing to move, and drowning in household chores — all while trying to be present for my husband and toddler and keep growing in a career I love.

Outsourcing some of that mental load felt like exactly what I needed.

I wanted help keeping our household running so I could be more present at home and at work.

So, I created a job description, researched household-employee requirements, determined an hourly rate we could afford, and posted the role in local Facebook groups.

After reviewing over a dozen applications in the first week, we ended up hiring a young woman who was finishing her college degree and had experience in short-term rental cleaning and management.

After about a year with us, she moved out of state, so we rehired for the position and quickly found another wonderful fit: a mom of adult children with decades of household-management experience.

Our current arrangement works out to $17 an hour and about eight hours a week, and feels worth every penny.

We keep a standing weekly to-do list, and I text her anything else I might need while she’s at our house or running errands for us.

She tackles the big things, like making sure our fridge and pantry are stocked and that our daughters have clean, seasonally appropriate clothes in organized closets, and small ones, like restocking toilet paper in all our bathrooms and washing dishes left in the sink.

Sometimes, she’ll return purchases and online orders for us or even prep extra dinners when one of us is going to be away on a business trip, and the other is solo parenting.

There aren’t many drawbacks to this arrangement, though it can take time and organization to properly delegate.

For instance, my husband and I still handle ordering groceries; we just set our household manager as the pickup contact.

If there’s a specific recipe that we’d like her to cook, we make sure we have the right ingredients, print it out, and leave it for her.

It also took a while to figure out the best use of our household manager’s time versus what I’d prefer to do myself.

For example, she washes our daughters’ clothing and household linens, but my husband and I do our own loads of laundry.

Our household manager is such an important part of our village, and we’re so grateful to have worked with two incredible women over the past two years.

I recognize that paying for this kind of help isn’t an option for every family, and we’re fortunate to be able to make room for it in our budget.

Yes, around $7,000 a year is a significant expense, but we feel the return on investment every day.

In this season of our lives, we’ve decided that getting hundreds of hours of our family time back is worth prioritizing.

Instead of waking up early on a Saturday morning to do laundry or start meal prepping, we can go for a walk with our daughters.

I no longer feel like we’re falling behind if we decide to take a day trip to the beach or spend hours at our favorite playground.

And there’s no guilt if we choose to just have a lazy, relaxing day at home.

Beyond that, I no longer stress so much about all the things that need to get done.

Instead, I add them to my list and, knowing my household manager will handle them when she’s here, I can mentally let them go.

I used to think being a good mom and wife meant finding a way to do it all.

Now, I think it means knowing what deserves my time and what I can let someone else take off my plate.