How Much is a Homemaker Worth?

Finally, i can tell my husband how much he should be giving… hmmm… no… how much he should be paying me…

How Much is a Homemaker Worth? | MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice.

But seriously, being a Stay-At-Home-Mum (SAHM) or a Homemaker or a Home Manager isn’t a walk in the park, it isn’t all coffee and chit-chat. Like i said to a friend recently, there are things which will not get done or will not be done as well if i were not a SAHM (actually i prefer the title of Home Manager ;)).

i closed my home business almost 10 months ago and since then i have been wondering to myself, how on earth did i get everything done before and still run a business which involved a fair amount of travel? Of course, there were weeks when i would have to leave the cleaning till next week or hire extra help to look after my little boy so that i could run my business. Now that i don’t have the business to mind, i’m still finding that my time seems limited, there even seems to be more to do! How is that possible? i’m don’t know – i’m still trying to find out.

Let’s look at what i do during a typical week (just talking Monday to Friday):

i do roughly 8 hours of cleaning the house and the laundry for the week. Cooking takes up maybe 10 hours a week (just counting 5 days per week). i do German classes and Bible Study so that’s about 9 hours including travel time and homework time. Then there is helping kid with homework which adds up to about 1.5 hours a week (he’s only in 1st grade). We also have to count the time we care for kid in other ways, reading to him, playing with him, teaching him other skills like cooking/making models etc, making him snacks, taking him to his different activities – that’s takes up most of the rest of the week. So if you count the hours for that, roughly adds up to 37 hours of childcare.

So in a typical 5 day week, a Home Manager works roughly 65.5 hours. This is not counting midnight wake-ups for various things from nightmares to needing water to putting in extra nightlight. Then there is also the weekend in which a Home Manager works too… although ideally the workload is supposed to be split by half (doesn’t always happen that way).

A Home Manager also doesn’t get vacation time. In fact if you look at it factually, a Home Manager actually takes her/his work on vacation 😉 Oh and there is most definitely no such thing as being on sick leave… there is work to be done even if you are ill, especially so if you have a spouse who travels lots for work.

Now all this is not to complain that i dislike being a Home Manager or Homemaker or SAHM – i like being all that. i’m just happy to know that someone has put a monetary value on what i do as a Home Manager 😀 Right now, my “salary” are love, hugz and kisses 😉

syc