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May 10, 2002
Middle Class Guilt
It's a lovely, beautiful day here in Seattle - and I'm lucky enough to be working from home, so I've got the windows open and have been taking several outdoor breaks. Being home, I also heard it when the mowing service showed up at my southern neighbor's house (Gordon - more on him another day).
When I was growing up, I had lawn-mowing duty from the time I was old enough to be trusted with a lawnmower until I left home. Mowing services were for people too self-important to take care of their own yards. I took that attitude with me into adulthood, and mowed the lawn at my later residences in Ohio. So did everyone else, save when a neighborhood kid might come around with his dad's lawnmower. You had to drive over to Upper Arlington to see the trucks of the lawn services.
I've been mowing the lawn (bought a reel mower) since I bought the house, but it's been one of those eats-into-Saturday things. It'll be another month before the sun is up late enough for me to mow after I get home from work. Curious, I asked the guys mowing (and edging) my neighbor's lawn what they charged. "Oh, yeah, I mowed that lawn for the guy who lived there before you," said Art Riff of Dependable Lawn Service, "Fifteen bucks."
Fifteen dollars. I have a rule of thumb - I "bill" myself at about $35/hour. It works this way: let's say there's a task I'm perfectly capable of doing, but lack the time or inclination to do. If it takes an hour to do, and I can pay someone else to do it for less than my personal $35/hour rate, I'll have that other person do it. It takes me a little more than a half hour to mow the lawn, and I don't have a weed whacker to edge it. $15 is a deal by that rule-of-thumb I have, so now Art and his co-worker Joey are mowing my lawn.
So why do I have this strange sense of "I should be doing that" guilt? There's plenty (plenty!) of other yard work for me to do and it frees up my time (and I firmly believe that my own time is the sum capital of my life). But I still feel like I'm some uppity yup now that I'm paying someone to mow my lawn. sigh.
Posted by jim at May 10, 2002 04:22 PM