Product Description

Disputes between husbands and wives over the division of household labor are a leading cause of marital strife. And it's no wonder--women spend an average of 35 hours per week doing chores like cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry, while their husbands spend less than nine. Even when work is divided equally, how do busy families fit in the equivalent of a full-time job and still have time for more interesting and fun activities?

A Housekeeper Is Cheaper Than a Divorce: Why You CAN Afford to Hire Help and How to Get It presents a solution that's been largely overlooked for at least a couple of generations--delegating those chores to a paid worker. Despite the cultural myths that label household help as a luxury only for the wealthy, author Kathy Fitzgerald Sherman shows that hiring help can be not only an effective time-management tool but also the best economic decision for a family. She offers some ideas for rearranging budgets to hire the help that will give busy women time for work, play, family, exercise, even needed sleep.

Affordability isn't the only stumbling block addressed in the book, which explains both the whys and hows of hiring household help. Challenges dealt with include guilt feelings, tax mysteries, language barriers, training challenges, differing quality standards, and finding the perfect employee to handle unwanted daily chores. The book is loaded with helpful forms and checklists, along with dozens of anecdotes and examples from the author's own experiences and a nationwide survey of professional women.

Readers Will Learn: - Why household help is a time management tool, not a luxury for the wealthy
- Why depending on husbands to share housework is unrealistic and futile
- How to cost-justify a housekeeper's salary and sell the idea to a spouse
- How to decide whether to hire a nanny, a housekeeper, or a cleaning service
- How to define the job that needs doing and then find the right employee for that job
- How to organize a household so that a housekeeper can work effectively
- How to comply with the "nanny tax" laws
- How to apply management skills from the workplace to treat a housekeeper fairly, while getting the best possible performance for every hiring dollar

What is an overloaded family to do when household chores overwhelm them? There is a solution beyond constant bickering or exhaustion. After all...a housekeeper is cheaper than a divorce.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #692333 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
A really practical handbook on how to bring together those who want to serve and those who want to be served. -- Ann B. Davis, actress, played Alice on The Brady Bunch

An important concept, often overlooked. Not taking this advice may be more expensive than you think. -- Richard Carlson, author of Dont Sweat the Small Stuff

Hiring a housekeeper...allows time for women to explore new opportunities. -- ForeWord Magazine, September 2000

This book offers important guidelines for getting additional support in the home. -- John Gray, Ph.D., author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

About the Author
Kathy Fitzgerald Sherman has employed household help of various kinds for nearly 20 years, successfully using management skills she developed during a high-tech career in Silicon Valley. Like millions of mothers everywhere, Kathy struggles to balance career, childrearing, and homemaking. She finds that delegating housework to a paid employee is the only workable solution to this challenge.

After earning a bachelors degree in computer science and mathematics in 1978, Kathy worked in the computer industry, holding positions in engineering, sales, and management. In 1986, she formed Results Unlimited, a motivational speaking and seminar business specializing in personal effectiveness. She teaches others to define goals consistent with their values, interests, and priorities and to use their skills and resources to achieve those goals.

Taking her own advice, Kathy changed the form of her business after her first child was born in 1988. Instead of leading seminars on personal effectiveness, she began writing about the topic from home. But her plan to have it all wasnt workingthere simply werent enough hours in the day to meet all of her responsibilities, and her husband wasnt interested in pitching in. After an epiphany in which she noticed her teenage babysitter playing with her kids while she folded laundry, she swapped her once-a-week cleaning service and occasional babysitter for a twenty-hour-a-week housekeeper. The life transformation that followed inspired her to write A Housekeeper Is Cheaper Than a Divorce.

An award-winning writer and speaker, Kathy has been published in newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor, parenting magazines including Bay Area Parent and Big Apple Parent, and business and computer magazines. She also moderates several on-line discussion groups for parents.

Kathy grew up in Utica, New York, and graduated from the University of Scranton, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children, ages 9 and 11.

Customer Reviews

Author's biases obvious throughout, arguments extreme, unconvincing
I am surprised by all the good reviews this book has received.

To start with, this book is mainly about a woman who says 1) she isn't very good at housework and 2) just plain doesn't want to do it, so she hires it out. Now, mind you, there is *nothing* wrong with that attitude, people hire out tasks all the time for those very reasons.

However, throughout the book, she makes derogatory assumptions such as:

Housekeeping is a no skills/low skills job
People who choose to be housekeepers aren't very smart
Children can't be trained to take over housekeeping tasks

And so on--too many to list here, and then in other parts of the book she goes and contradicts some of her previous statements.

Her arguments for hiring a housekeeper are of the whiny, I-shouldn't-have-to-do-this-demeaning-work type, and she brings up the tired, "traditional" man vs. woman arguments, as well as "we're all too busy". Do men and women argue over housework? Of course, but these days usually the arguments are neatnik vs. slob, not about who's doing (or not doing) the dishes. Are people busier than they used to be? Maybe, but that is a choice you make, not something forced on you.

Children need some chores to teach them life skills for when they leave home--the few chores she leaves for children in her book are a joke. If you're willing to take the time to train a new housekeeper, why not spend that quality time training your children instead? Not to mention that, if you're truly willing to pay for housekeeping, why not pay family first?

She has a cost justification worksheet, where for example she states that you save money by having your housekeeper prepare your meals. Well, no, you're shifting the costs from buying convenience foods and/or eating out to paying your new employee. And, by the way, her website where she says there are forms to use does not work.

In one way, this book was unintentionally funny--in the back she has a list of references. In it, she lists books such as The Sidetracked Sisters Catch Up On the Kitchen. If she'd taken time to actually *read* the book, and their first book, Sidetracked Home Executives, she would have learned that it would not be necessary to hire a housekeeper. Once you go to all the trouble to clean up for the housekeeper and get a system in place (which Sherman insists on, by the way, so that a housekeeper will *want* to work for you), the little that is left to do could easily be accomplished by her children, her, and her husband. For example, one of the DAILY tasks for her housekeeper is to vacuum the entry, living room, etc. Well, if you have a "no shoes" policy, you could vacuum once a week, or even every other week.

After reading this book, I still was not convinced that hiring out your housekeeping would allow you to increase your income, or even save you money, although it might make you feel better.

Now, on the other hand, a housekeeper would be quite helpful, say if you have several children under 5 at home, or are looking into one for an elderly parent, you're recovering from surgery, etc., and for someone in these situations, this book would be helpful for overcoming objections to hiring one. But for the vast majority of people, let's be honest, hiring out housekeeping is a *luxury*, not a necessity.

The book has a few useful food recipes, some tips on getting your point across, and a sample housekeeper schedule that you might find useful. Borrow from your library first, before buying.

I also suggest that people read "Your Money or Your Life" along with this book to get some perspective. Would you rather do a little housework here and there on your terms and timetable, or work at a job that not only costs you money to go to, but puts restrictions on how you spend your time and creates extra stress in your life so that you can hire a housekeeper?

No More Resentment Over Household Chores
I'm sold on the idea of getting household help, but many of my friends say they would rather do it on their own. Rather clean toilets than play golf? Rather mop the floor than spend time with their families? Hey, get your priorities straight.
A clean house creates a haven for you and your family, but it doesn't have to cost you all your free time. This book helps you understand the need for help in our over-scheduled lives and what can be traded to make it affordable.
The book is written in a straight-forward manner and really covers the topic well.
Here's a comment I found by the author on the Dollar Stretchers website: "Conflicts over housework are rapidly joining the 'big two' causes of arguments (sex and money) in two-career families. Household chores which include tasks like grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, ironing, daily tidy-up, and heavy cleaning average 35 hours a week in families with children, a burden that is borne disproportionately by women whether or not they work outside the home. After trying, and failing, to get their husbands to take on an equal share of this workload, women are paying the price through increased stress levels, loss of leisure time, and damage to their marriages because of rising levels of anger and resentment towards their spouses."

Selfless plugs
This "author", and I use that term loosely, has the nerve to write several "customer reviews" (as opposed to editorial reviews, which she is obviously not qualified to do) on several ground breaking amd creative books regarding social and economic conditions. For what reason? To shamelessly promote her own book. This is a pathetic attempt to plug her own work, and its a disgrace to legitimate authors. She ought to be ashamed of herself, not only for her comments, but for this pathetic literary attempt. Shame on you Kathy Sherman.