Shortcuts to Guilt Free Living, Right Now

1. On food, you don’t have to cook! Locate a favorite gourmet takeout, consider hiring a personal chef, or just familiarize yourself with a good grocer’s freezer.

2. Get delivery for dry cleaning, many dry cleaners offer this service already, door to door, one less weekend errand to run.

3. Hire a maid or cleaning person. Surely your time is worth more than it takes to spend 3-5 hours a week vacuuming, dusting (well some you skip that one), polishing, and scouring. Besides given the choice between time with friends and cleaning, I’d be with friends, wouldn’t you?

4. Call in Blossom Boxes or any other quick fix solution for your live plant needs both indoors and out. You’d be surprised at what a difference this will make both visually and physically (plants clean the air), and how inviting your place will look. All you have to do is add water. (I promise, from a former black thumb, I can now keep almost anything alive!)

5. Hire a handyman to get those nagging shores done! You know you’ve wanted to add crown moulding to the bedrooms upstairs, but haven’t the time or the talent, call for help. You know you need the deck restained and sealed, call for help. You don’t have to do it yourself, you just need to get it done.

6. Find a pet sitter that you like and likes your pets. It is much simpler to get them in to take care of Rover or Fido, than hauling to the vet everytime you travel. It also is a way to have someone pick up your mail, and water your plants! Worry free travel is hard to come by, this step can make a big difference.

7. Eliminate a phone line. That’s right, in this age of technology do you really need a cell phone, a home phone, and a work phone?? Okay so you can’t eliminate work, what about consolidating your home phone to your cell phone? You’ll never be stuck in a power outage, and you’ll have to check one less location for messages. Besides are you ever home to answer anyway?? While you are at it, consider consolidating your multiple email addresses, it isn’t necessary to have more than two unless you are playing with aliases.

8. Use a courier service to ease both your workload and personal errands, there are also concierge services that can help. It is often amazing how much time we lose to running errands, just to pick up a prescription, get film developed, take care of shoe repair, and more. Explore ways that will save you the time, while being a reasonable exchange of dollars for your savings.

9. Celebrate the easy way, avoid all the dirty work?? Hire a butler, party planner, or caterer. These talented specialists can do it all, from facilitating your food presentation and clean up, to actually bringing it all in and doing it for you. Don’t wait to have a party because it’s too much work, know who to call to make it easier.

10. Hire a high schooler or even college student to take care of basic landscaping. I’m not talking about the stuff that needs a trained eye, but essential weeding, mulching, laying of pine straw or bark bits can all be delegated. You can still do the pruning and planting if you have the time and inclination, but the rest can be farmed out.