Posted on 01/30/2012 1:58:58 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The life of a homemaker is one that includes an endless amount of demands and to-dos. Depending on the size of the home and family, the position of homemaker can go well beyond the usual nine to five. We examined some of the tasks that a homemaker might do to find out how much his or her services would net as individual professional careers. We only take into consideration tasks which have monetary values and use the lowest value for each calculation.
Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most homemakers. From breakfast to dinner, there is plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. The American Personal Chef Association reports that its personal chefs make $200 to $500 a day. Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A homemaker must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and deliver it to the home. Grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $5 to $10.
Total cost for services: $1,005 per five day work week x 52 weeks = $52,260 per year.
House Cleaner
A clean and tidy home is the foundation of an efficient household. Typical cleaning duties include vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing sinks as well as loading the dishwasher and making beds. Professional maids or house cleaning service providers will charge by the hour, number of rooms or square footage of the home. For example, bi-weekly cleaning of a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with five rooms, costs $59-$124. A 1,300 square-foot, single-story home with seven rooms runs $79-$150. A 2,200 two-story, three-bedroom home with nine rooms averages $104-$180. Additional tasks such as oven or refrigerator cleaning and dusting mini blinds can run an extra $20-$25.
Total cost for services: $118 per week X 52 Weeks = $6,136 per year.
Child Care
Homemakers provide full-time, live-in child care. This type of service from a professional provider would usually come with a host of perks including health insurance, paid vacation and sick days, federal holidays off, dental and vision coverage, and bonuses. The International Nanny Association's 2011 survey found that nannies make $600 to $950 per week in gross wages, on average.
Total cost for services: $600 a week plus perks/benefits x 52 Weeks = $31,200 per year.
Driver
A private car service might seem like a high-end luxury to most, but the beneficiaries of a homemaker get this service on a daily basis. Companies like Red Cap, which provides personal drivers that use the client's own car as the means of transportation, offer a glimpse into the cost of this homemaker task. An elite membership which includes 365 days of unlimited, round-trip service is $1,000 a year plus 33 cents - $2.03 per minute.
Total cost for services: $1,000 per year + [(estimated miles driven 8000 miles / 50 MPH) x 60 min/hr x $0.33 per minute] = $4,168 total per year.
Laundry Service
Clean clothes come at a cost when you have to pay for the service that most homemakers do for free. Professional laundry services charge by the pound. For instance, Susie's Suds Home Laundry Service, Inc. in Texas charges 90 cents to $1.00 a pound to wash, dry, fold, hang and steam your clothes. Items that take longer to dry such as comforters, blankets, rugs and winter clothes are assessed at a price of $12-$15 each.
Total cost for services: $0.90 per pound x 4 pounds of clothes per day x 5 days per weeks x 52 weeks = $936 total per year.
Lawn Maintenance
Basic maintenance of the exterior property is a less common, but possible duty of a homemaker. This could include things such as mowing, debris removal, edging and trimming the lawn. These services cost about $30 a week on average.
Total cost for services: $30 per week x 52 weeks = $1,560 total per year.
The Bottom Line
Total for a year of all services is: $52,260 + $6,137 + $31,200 + $4,168 + $936 + $1,560 = $96,261 per year.
The daily work of a homemaker can sometimes be taken for granted by his or her family members. However, these services could earn a homemaker a considerable wage if he or she took those skills to the marketplace. Homemakers in general contribute a lot more to the home in addition to these tasks, and no amount of money can fill those needs.
She’s priceless. As a result, she is trusted with all I own—especially in my absence, with the care and control of those others most precious to me, and no small say in the allocation of resources I bring in. It isn’t a question of 50/50, more like 110/110. We are a team, after all, and that which is not to our mutual benefit benefits no one.
I’m the type of guy that likes a challenge.
If my wife, or anybody, told me they didn’t think I could do something, that would be the only incentive I need.
I tend to kill myself trying to prove my doubters wrong.
In the 1990s before conservative women started regaining the upper hand over the feminists, I discovered a way to get under the skin of my rich customers who would work outside the home, or in their vanity boutique although their husbands were very rich.
I would point out how fascinating it was that the the most important female role model to their little daughters and sons, was that mousy little, shy, traditional, 20 year old Guatemalan girl who lived in the house, and that was raising them.
You should have seen some of the saucer eyes that I saw when I would point that out.
I was raised by a single mom that had to work, but I could never imagine that the people with husbands in the 4 and 5 hundred thousand dollar bracket would do it on purpose.
Oh posh! That’s such moth-eaten feminist clap-trap that I can hardly believe it’s being posted.
How about my wages? I do the following:
1. Sole income earner - I want 100% tax deduction.
2. Teacher and Principal of a homeschool: Where’s my NEA wages?
3. Handyman: I can fix darn near anything - including broken hearts.
4. Chief gardener: I grow food for my family and others - no pay despite rising food costs.
5. Carpenter: non-union and proud of it.
6. Bricklayer: formerly union, now without a card.
7. Welder: I can join metals, but I ain’t getting paid for this either.
8. Engineer: I routinely layout and execute earthwork and land improvement projects - uh, where my cut of the earth friendly cash grants?
9. Beekeeper: I’m restoring the earth - broke there, too.
10. Orchardist: Fruit given away after family provisioning.
11. Cook: I know what side of the skillet the handle is on and I get no complaints, either.
12. Plumber: most of those guys are licensed to steal. Me, I get nothing.
13. HVAC technician: DIY or freeze.
14. Housecleaner: probably my short suit, but a talent nonetheless.
15. Launderer: No, I’m not Chinese but I can get spots out and my whites are whiter than white.
16. Seamst(er?): I can actually sew - made myself a sleeping bag and a pair of overboots of my own design. No Parisian fashions, though.
17. General contractor: Jacking the house up currently for a major renovation later on.
18. Lab researcher and technician: I do everything from distill alcohol (for product solvent recovery - BATF approved), gather date for analysis on chicken and crop production, practice agronomy and horticultural technologies all the time in tissue culture, grafting and genetic selection.
19. Writer and consultant: Part-time teacher of low-tech, self-reliance skills for various groups.
20. Wiper of tears and mender of relationships - part-time psychologist and therapist for domestic and greater family relationships.
Well, that’s a few jobs I don’t get paid a damn thing for. Where in the heck do I apply for my government grant? I want my money, honey!
I was a stay at home mom for 20 years and I did an awesome job of it. But the one job that i believe sucked the most was the “poop, pee and puke cleaner upper” How much is that worth on the open market?
The description of your wife sounds a lot like me. My DH and I try to compromise ... if we light the fireplace, it is likely that I will open a window or two. For Christmas, I bought him a recliner that has heat and massage built-in. He is much more comfortable now, since when he comes in he showers and hits the recliner. From there, he rules the world, but now he has two remotes. :)
Calling BS on much of this. Most “mom’s” are not chefs, they are cooks. Most cooks make 7 to 10 per hour, most meals take less than one hour to make. So 10 times 3 meals is $30 per day, times 5 day work week, $150 per week or $7,800 per year. Even if you add in two more hours per week for grocery shopping, and a couple of meals during the weekend, it is less than $200 / week. $10,000 per year is a far better estimate.-—————
Most ‘moms’ don’t get 2 days a week off either. Or do you live in a universe that only has 5 days in a week?
Most dads don’t get two days off either so what’s your point? I included working hours on the weekend in my calculation.
We are told by the same press urban families with kids in government skoolz must be and are fed breakfast, lunch and dinner at said indoctrination center. Homemakers there ain’t cooking for anyone.
One sixty per hour? Sign me up.
Yeah, because that’s applicable. The inner cities are full of two parent homes with a full time parent at home. Oh wait, they’re not...
Have you ever read the marriage/divorce threads? Now those can get interesting. On the one hand, you have charter members of the he-man women haters club who’ll drone on for paragraphs about how any man who’d actually marry a woman are dolts. Then you have a sizable number who like to brag about their mail-order brides and how superior they are to American women, yadda yadda.
It’s nothing to with politics, and everything to do with the internet. Not everyone, but a good portion of forum denizens (any forum) are socially maladjusted misanthropes. That’s why they’re on the internet all day.
I just look at as the value my wife places on getting to have sex with me.
You’re right. I guess my problem is that I expect this sort of misogyny on other forums but not a forum peopled by conservatives who claim to be the defenders of hearth and home. Geez, it’s like being at DU. At least DUers appear to be smart enough not to crap in their own yard.
I try to avoid the threads you reference as they tend to send me straight into an apoplectic seizure. All women are lying, cheating, vile, selfish, evil, barely human beings. Got it.
Why they would choose to marry the kind of person with the obvious character flaws they describe in the first place is beyond me.
Thanks for the laugh! :-D
Oh, wait... I didn’t mean I laughed because, well, you know... because it was absurd. Not that I’d know it was absurd. Or that it wasn’t absurd. I mean, I’d really have no idea. I just meant...
Oh, never mind... ;-)
They will try to tax it as capital gains.
$160 hr is what the company charges a client, workers get paid the usual pittance - less than $16 hr ...
I hope you are including half the cost of housing, food, insurance, etc. for your children. If a wife charges a husband for taking care of her own kids, he should certainly be able to charge her for half of the cost of housing, feeding, insuring, etc., them.
To be more realistic, you should be do the budget as if you were a single mother who has to pay for everything.
And don’t give me that “on call” nonsense. You should not be paid for sleeping or watching the Oxygen channel or sitting at the hairdresser with your cell phone (which your husband pays for) on in case you happen to get a rare call from the kids’ school.
You probably really work 2 hours a day.
Dang, you sound like you got burned. Hope you find happiness one day....
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