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Effortless living starts here. Let a luxury personal assistant handle the details so you can focus...
What kind of household help do you need? Housekeeper vs. Personal Assistant vs. House Manager: let's talk about it.
In a nutshell, it depends! There are many types and levels of service you can choose from when considering household help. We’ll break down the various options and help you decide which one is the best fit for you and your home. Taking into account your budget, expected workload, and outcome goals, you can find household help that suits your specific needs.
Housekeeper or Maid service
This is the type of help most people are familiar with. A person or team comes into your home and cleans. That’s it! Some service providers may tidy or do laundry, but that is up to the individual company or person. Pricing and scheduling methods can vary quite a bit depending on whether you live in a large city, how often you need to have the house cleaned, and whether you expect a standard or deep cleaning.
Mother’s Helper
This is typically a person who provides support and assistance to a parent. Their duties can include short babysitting stints while a parent showers, goes to an appointment, or runs errands, light housekeeping, tidying kids’ rooms, and helping prepare meals. Mother’s helpers tend to be paid lower rates than other household help because they are directly supervised by a parent. This is a great option if you are a stay-at-home parent who needs a few hours of help each day, want to spend time with your kids while having support available, and don’t want to break the bank.
Virtual Assistant
This is someone who works remotely and allows you to delegate online tasks that you don’t want to do or don’t have time for. They can work independently with minimal supervision. Tasks that fall to a virtual assistant may be online research, planning travel or simple events, scheduling, making phone calls, and handling personal or light admin/office tasks that can be completed remotely. There is usually a lengthy onboarding process as you and your assistant get to know each other and develop a working relationship. Proactivity may be limited, especially during the onboarding process. An important factor to consider before hiring a virtual assistant is whether you prefer a US-based person or if an overseas virtual assistant will meet your needs.
Personal Assistant or House Manager
Personal assistants and house managers generally provide a higher level of service and utilize a broader range of skills to complete their work. Their responsibilities can range from completing weekly chores, errands, and occasional projects to fully overseeing the functioning of the household. This may include tracking and completing maintenance tasks, scheduling service providers and ensuring work is completed in a timely manner, communicating with other people within the household (such as housekeepers, landscapers, pool companies, etc.), and managing entire to-do lists. Options for hiring a personal assistant or house manager include going through staffing agencies, working with an individual, or hiring through a company such as Queen of To Do. Rates can vary depending on the number of hours needed each week, duties assigned, and expectations as outlined in a contract or service agreement.
Lifestyle Concierge
This person ensures everything in their client’s life runs as smoothly as possible. From making reservations to keeping their favorite treats on hand, a lifestyle concierge is the client’s right-hand human! By combining these roles, they build a deep understanding of the client’s preferences, needs, and home so they can identify and handle issues before the client notices or needs to mention them. The ultimate in proactive support, a lifestyle concierge can free up a client’s mental bandwidth and provide them with a consistently peaceful home environment that encourages them to relax and unwind in their leisure time. Clients with memberships through Queen of To Do experience the freedom and tranquility that a lifestyle concierge can offer.
How to Decide Which Type of Household Help You Need
Start with what you want off your plate. If it's the cleaning itself, a housekeeper is a great fit. If you want an extra set of hands while you're home with the kids, look at a mother's helper. If most of your to-do list lives in your inbox and calendar, a virtual assistant can take it on.
If the hard part is keeping track of it all, like remembering when the HVAC filter is due, following up with the pool company, or noticing the pantry is out of your kids' favorite snacks, that's where a personal assistant or house manager comes in. The more you want someone to anticipate what's needed before you ask, the closer you are to a lifestyle concierge.
Budget usually follows the same order. The more oversight and proactivity you want, the higher the rate.
If you're in the Austin area and still not sure where your household fits, we're happy to talk it through. Queen of To Do has been helping Austin families find the right level of support since 2011.
