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If You Could Buy 5 More Hours for $25, Would You?

Jay (Jason Van Orden) 10 Comments

What small things in your life could you outsource cheaply and reclaim valuable bits of your time. My wife and I just found one and I’m kicking myself for not outsourcing it sooner—the laundry.

We live in Manhattan with no washer and dryer in our apartment (a common thing here). So doing laundry is always an ordeal. We probably spend at least five hours a month doing our laundry (total between the two of us).

For the first time today, we decided to check into pickup/delivery laundry services. To our surprise it wasn’t that expensive. We had it done for $22. It was beautiful. They picked it up in the morning, a few hours later it was done and everything folded and on hangers.

We figure all in all it will cost us $60/mo to have our laundry done for us. And here’s the kicker. That is only about $25 more than what we spend per month when we do it ourselves!

DUH! For only $25/month, I’ve reclaimed five hours. That’s only $5/hour. Just goes to show how we get tunnel vision and adopt the status quo overlooking simples improvement we could make to our lifestyle and business.

If someone offered to give you five more hours a month at a cost of only $5 per hour, wouldn’t you take it!? I’ll take that deal any day. Especially when I can make many, many times more than that with that time.

At least I was smart enough to have groceries delivered for the past two years.

Has anyone else come up with any ingenious improvements to save them time and improve their lifestyle?

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This post is in: 4-Hour Workweek, Automating, Streamlining and Outsourcing, Lifestyle Design, Productivity

10 Comments Leave a Comment


Hi Guys,
One of the best ways to reclaim time is … if you have one, turn off your television.

Really enjoying your podcast, all the best.

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I am looking into hiring a VA at the moment. I was thinking of hiring someone to do 100 laps of the swimming pool for me every day as well. That way I get healthy without leaving the PC.

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@Dean,

Ingenious! I’m looking for someone who can sleep 8 hours ever night for me then report back on what I dreamed about.

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@Jennifer

Good advice. To quote the band Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, “Kill Your Television.”

I got rid of my TV all together. I still watch stuff, but only on DVD and on my Mac. That way I am choosing more specifically what I watch and don’t waste time “channel surfing.”

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Jay,

I like the laundry idea, one of the perks of city life I guess. Out here in Jersey it wouldn’t work, travel would kill it. Plus with 4 kids, our laundry is always going, there is no end..LOL

cool though how you have found a way to add more hours to the day.

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I’m not sure if it’s ingenious or not but I have hired others to do research for me. I could have spent the hours and hours doing it, but why!? My time is WAY more valuable than what I paid for the service.
I’m not to the point where I need a VA yet, but have found Scriptlance very valuable in saving me time.

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PA’s and VA’s, excercising while ipoding, clearers, gardiners and cooks. I’m spending a fortune saving all this time. One thing that has saved us lots of time is off shoring legacy data entry jobs and off shore tele surveys to existing client databases to proof and expand the information on held (especially on bounced emails). Were in Sydney and we send it to Indonesia.

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I certainly don’t mind spending money to gain time as long as I can make more than what I spend back with how I spend the time. The great thing about information marketing is your time becomes worth quite a bit making it affordable to spend on all kinds of outsourcing.

For those getting started, you might think of your time as being worth $25/hr. That’s a fine place to start, but I recommend getting it up above $100/hr as soon as possible.

The first place to start is with a sales job on yourself. Do you believe that your time is worth that much? If you do, then you’ll stop changing the oil on your car ;).

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I pay $200 a month to get my yard cut. This saves me about 16 hours a month.

I pay a few more dollars per dry cleaning round for a service that picks it up and drops it off at my house. Probably saves me a couple hours a month in driving to/from the drycleaners.

My wife hires a maid to do the deep cleaning twice a month for $120 total. This saves her about 16 hours of cleaning.

As busy as we are, we figure that we either need to be making money with our time or spending time with our kids (and each other!) Plus, I joke that this is the way we contribute to keeping the economy moving.

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Sean

@Kris

I guess I am a nerd, but the first thing I thought when I read this post was how great that is for the economy.

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