I've heard from many successful lawyers and other professionals how they've struggled to get help at home. It's clearly a bottleneck for many lawyers, and often an unrecognized one.
My wife and I run a recruiting business while raising two kids under four. We wouldn't be able to do it without hiring for help at home, and it's taken a lot of hires over years to build our system. Here's an overview of the hires we've made at home and their impact.
Our cleaner cleans our apartment twice a week. We realized that having a clean and organized home creates calm and focus at home, so we bumped up to getting our place cleaned twice a week. We've worked with the same cleaner for almost five years, and he found us from a post we made on a local Facebook group.
We cook at home every day, so the dishes pile up, and it's amazing how much laundry you do for little ones. I noticed that Emma and I reliably fought in the evening over who was doing more of the cooking or dishes or laundry. Those arguments could easily spiral. So I asked our cleaner if he'd do our dishes and laundry. Emma was resistant at first. It seemed like abdicating responsibility. Our arguments disappeared. I think laundry and dishes help have done more for us than couples' counselors.
We hired several nannies over the last couple of years, and interviewed many more. It took a lot of work to learn how to raise the bar for what we can expect from nannies and how we can create a work environment nannies thrive in. Emma met our nanny at our favorite coffee shop who was musing out loud about getting a new nanny role. Now that the kids are in daycare, she helps us with cooking (which had gone from passion to chore for me), and helps manage our household. Our nanny values health, time outside, and exercise. We reinforce each other's values.
We were skeptical of daycare. We want our children to move their bodies and eat healthy and get individualized attention. Frankly, we've had to trade these off from daycare to get the benefits: social time, structure, and systematic instruction. We adapted. We send food with our kids and get them time for outside play before and after school.
Building household support takes time and a lot of hires. It won't happen overnight. But the payoff compounds. When evening arguments disappear and the mental load gets distributed, you show up differently at work and at home.
For professionals trying to build something while raising a family, the unrecognized bottleneck is often right where you live. The question isn't whether you can afford to get help. It's whether you can afford not to.
What hire has helped you the most at home?