I interviewed Weiner afterward and found some parallels with her work and my own. Because everyone does have to write a little in their lives, most people think they do it just fine. They’re wrong.
Likewise, with clothes, “just because you like it doesn’t mean it works on you,” she says. There is a corollary: “Just because it fits doesn’t mean you should wear it.” There are oceans of bad clothes out there. There are also oceans of bad ideas, such as that if you’re larger, you should wear baggy clothes, or if you’re young, it’s OK to look like a stuffed sausage in a pair of jeans. Also, “there are some things that stay in style, but many things that don’t.” She once went through a woman’s closet and had to chuck outfits from the early 1980s. On the other hand, with professional help, no one is hopeless. She once went shopping with a sixteen-year-old boy whose mom called her in desperation. He enjoyed the experience too. Who wouldn’t enjoy shopping if someone could make it efficient and fun?
Hiring a personal shopper isn’t cheap, so it’s most practical if you’re buying lots of clothes—for instance, if you’ve just landed a new job or lost weight. I paid about $400 for Weiner’s time, though some department stores will perform similar services for free, as long as you buy your clothes from that store.
On a more ongoing basis, here’s a lower-budget way to outsource the task of styling. Find a boutique store that appeals to you (Ann Taylor Loft, Banana Republic), and figure out your size. Then, every season, buy two outfits straight off the mannequin. Down to the handbag or tie. These mannequins are professionally styled and will save you the trouble of figuring out what works together. They may also save you some money. After all, if you buy $1,500 of clothes a year, and only wear $750 worth (or less), anything that helps you shop smarter is more cash straight to the household bottom line.
Of course, once you own those fabulous clothes, you have to clean them. I’d argue that this is a good chore for outsourcing, too. You don’t do your own dry cleaning. You don’t do your own tailoring. So why not take it one step further and outsource your laundry?
That’s what Savara does. So, interestingly, does Sarah Wagner, a Philadelphia-based stay-at-home mom. She watches what she spends, but as she told me when we talked in 2008, she simply hates spending her afternoons stuck in the laundry room, dealing with the Sisyphean task of cleaning clothes that just get dirty again. “Folding the laundry requires uninterrupted time that I don’t have,” she says. “If I stop mid-load, the kids and dog will inevitably trample my work.”
So she contacted a business called We Wash It Laundry that usually caters to Philadelphia college students. It turned out that We Wash It does pickup, wash and fold, and delivery for private homes as well as dorms. They charge $1.10 per pound. For Wagner, this comes out to $25-35 per week. Given the time she saves, this is a small luxury on a per hour basis.
“A lot of my friends cannot believe I don’t do my own laundry,” she says. They tell her it only takes a little bit of time (though they haven’t added up the hours). They tell her to just put the kids in front of a DVD while she folds shirts. But “I don’t want to spend less time with my children,” Wagner says. “I want to spend less time doing housework.” After all, families may have fond memories of cooking together, but no one waxes nostalgic that “Mom always had piles of laundry in a basket.”
She’s on to something, though I recognize that sending out the laundry is not a typical American habit. I started doing it solely because my first apartment building in New York City lacked a washer-dryer.
There was a Laundromat across the street, but when I walked over with my bag and coins, I noticed a sign saying they would do it for me for about fifty cents a pound. I ran the numbers and decided to buy myself back my Saturdays by drinking less on Saturday nights and using the saved cash to outsource this chore.
My plan was to continue this, and when I moved with my new husband to a high-rise with a laundry service in the basement, we often paid the dollar per pound for our own clothes (though we did our baby’s clothes ourselves, since he required special detergent). Then, when Jasper was a year old, we moved to a bigger apartment. This apartment had a washer and dryer. Around the same time, I purchased some canvas army-surplus-type bags to replace the torn bags we had been sending to the laundry service.
Michael laughed at the purchase. I believe his exact words were, “That’s funny, since now we’ll never have to use them.”
I was a bit worried by this statement. To me, the fact that we possessed a washer and dryer didn’t mean we had to change anything about our routine. After all, we own a juicer, too, and don’t use that. Did my husband now expect me to spend hours each weekend doing this chore I hated?
The answer was no, though the end result wasn’t necessarily better from a life-management perspective. Michael decided that he would do the laundry, so now Saturdays often find him trotting around the apartment with a laundry basket. I’ve come up with a few strategies to minimize the job. The kids can rewear any pajamas or pants that did not suffer an active diaper blowout. We own enough underwear and socks that we can go weeks between loads. I rewear my exercise clothes. Why do I care if my sports bras smell when I start running if they’re just going to smell more five miles later? But when Michael’s traveling, I sometimes haul out the canvas bags. After all, the laundry service even matches my socks.
“I am surprised that more people don’t do this,” Wagner says. Certainly, it’s easier to outsource laundry in Manhattan, where so many people lack laundry rooms that there’s a competitively priced wash- and-fold business every few blocks, though Wagner and Savara managed to find such services in Philadelphia and Honolulu, respectively. If you’re looking for a service in your area, check with your dry cleaner first; they might do the job. If you strike out there, Google your zip code or city name and “wash and fold” or “pickup and delivery laundry service.” I found several businesses around the country this way, with fun names such as Alabaster Cleaners in San Francisco, and The Clothesline in Milford, Connecticut. A few national dry-cleaning franchises, such as Pressed4Time, do this in some areas, and if you live near a university, there might be a student service. Or you can go Craig’s List cruising for someone looking to moonlight—though you will need to talk with your accountant about the tax ramifications if the person you’re hiring is operating as an individual rather than as a business, or if the laundry is done in your home rather than in a commercial Laundromat.