How Long Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb: The Case for a Household Manager
It can take a while, as I found out. My wife and I noticed that the light bulb in our foyer was out and needed to be replaced. We needed a ladder but didn’t have one tall enough. So we needed to rent a ladder but didn’t have a truck big enough. So we had to have a contractor friend lend us a ladder. And then the light bulb was too “cool” and didn’t match the other lights. Six hours of work spread over a week and we had a new light bulb.
I quickly realized that our family would benefit from having someone manage and execute that and many other types of projects—from taking our car for oil changes to stocking our pantry with staples to meeting landscapers and contractors to ensuring that we had enough dishwasher tabs on hand and that our gutters were cleaned regularly.
I started to build out a detailed spreadsheet of all the processes that needed to be done around our home and got to about 80 different tasks that needed to be done at varying levels of frequency. I also added up how much time that would take and my total shocked me: 200 hours of work per year. I was floored.
I sat down and wrote up a job description for a Household Manager and, with one false start, hired someone who was a great fit—with our kids, my wife, and our large home in Toronto. We followed a similar process once we moved to San Francisco.
Here are three resources to help you build out this capability in your family:
A longer job description which could be used for more formal job boards
A shorter job description which could be used for less formal job boards (ie. Craigslist)
A spreadsheet template organizing the types of work, frequency of tasks, number of hours required, and regular responsibilities of our household manager.
I offer these resources to you and hope you find them helpful.