Getting Someone Else to Do Those Everyday Tasks

SAN DIEGO â€”  In March, when Larry Lewis led Harriet Schechter into his dining room, he was handling the details of three construction projects. His typical working day began at 5 a.m. and ended 15 hours later.

“He pointed to his dining-room table, which was almost invisible under piles of paper, and rolled his eyes,� said Schechter, a professional organizer who runs a business in Pacific Beach called The Miracle Worker.

“Piled in among the papers were all kinds of things he needed for his work, but hadn’t had time to organize. A phone number scrawled on a piece of tile. The name of a concrete company written on the flap of a cardboard box. His wife had just brought the mail in, but she couldn’t find a clear space to put it down. It was chaotic.�

But not unusual.

There are, said Schechter, many people like Lewis--�bright, successful people�--who are involved in so many projects that they simply haven’t the time to keep up.

So, a few months ago, with the idea of helping overextended clients, Schechter began a list of people in San Diego County who save others time. She offers it free to whoever wants it.

“There are people who will wait in line for you at the (Department of Motor Vehicles office), take your visiting mother-in-law sightseeing, wait at your home until the plumber comes. Just about anything,� she said.

“Some, like Picnic People--who will plan a picnic for you whether you have 10 guests or 1,000, and who employ a Hollywood set designer to design such picnic settings as a 17-foot-tall pirate ship--are big companies. But most of them are more along the lines of The Stowaways, a mother and daughter team who unpack for people who have just moved.�

At first, her list grew slowly.

Then, early in July, she met Stephanie Culp, author of “How to Get Organized When You Don’t Have the Time.�

“Stephanie is known as the organizer’s organizer. She told me that she’d been collecting time-savers, too, but in the Los Angeles area,� she said. “She inspired me to tackle my list with renewed energy.�

Grocery shopping and cooking are two time-consum

ing tasks that many busy people are glad to be relieved of, Schechter said, “at least part of the time.�

Kathy Yato, who organizes shows for her watercolorist husband, John, (well-known for his detailed local scenes of the Hotel del Coronado and Balboa Park) said their life is so hectic that she was delighted to discover that Doorstep Diets would deliver three meals a day right to their home.

“We have lunch and dinner delivered about three or four days a week now,� she said.

Joanne Guy, founder of Doorstep Diets, employs two cooks and three drivers and bakes all her own bread and muffins.

“I also used to bake croissants for the breakfasts,� she said. “But I had to stop making them to get into the American Heart Assn.’s book. All the meals are made from Weight Watchers recipes.�

“We’re not on a diet, but John was born in Japan and he loves that type of healthy food, with a lot of vegetables, fish and chicken,� Yato said. “And on the days we work from 8:30 a.m. to midnight, we’re too tired to cook.�

“We were recently asked by a bachelor attorney to find someone to cook dinner at his home three nights a week,� said Karen Cebreros, founder of Elan Timesavers. “And an elderly lady asked us to find someone to shampoo and set her hair in her home. And a client who is an Iranian businessman asked us if we’d take his parents on shopping trips. There are different requests all the time.�

Elan employs 18 part-time people.

“With all the skills they have between them, they can tackle just about anything. And if they can’t, we’ll find someone who can.�

Janie Ponteprino, a teacher who describes her life as “Busy, busy, busy, “ said that the quality of the life she and her husband lead has risen considerably since they hired Elan to take care of not only their house cleaning, but also the yard work.

‘Sense of Freedom’

“We have a wonderful sense of freedom, because we no longer have to spend our entire weekend doing chores,� Ponteprino said.

“How these businesses get started is often interesting,� said Schechter. “A lot of them are based on empathy for their clients.

“Four years ago, Joanne Guy was a working mother, coming home at night and cooking Weight Watchers meals for herself. She realized that the Weight Watchers recipes were a lot of work for someone weary at the end of a long day.�

Cebreros worked at Xerox for 10 1/2 years and said she was instrumental in getting Xerox to finance its current children’s day-care program.

“I know how hard it is for a working woman to be faced with something like a flooded kitchen, or a baby-sitter who doesn’t show up, just as she’s dashing off to work,� she said. “I want people to know they can call us for anything. “

Deborah Davis, owner of Debbie’s Pet/Plant/Home Care, belongs to a group of five mobile groups that, among them, cover most of San Diego County. Davis’ business originally focused on caring for pets and plants in the homes of people who were away on vacation.

“The time-saving services happened as a spin-off,� she said. “People kept asking if I would take their pets to the vet, or the groomers, or the airport.�

One of her clients, Mary Griswold, lives in Encinitas but commutes to San Diego to her job in the research department of KJQY-FM (K-JOY). Earlier this year, Griswold and her husband bought a friendly Dalmatian puppy named Sophie.

Dog-Walking Service

“We hated to think of her alone, and lonely, for 10 hours at a stretch while we were away. But neither of us have time to get home in the middle of the day,� explained Griswold, who recently hired Davis to take Sophie for a daily walk.

Davis, who also walks dogs for people recovering from surgery, says that it’s not always a case of just walking them.

“I have a client who has two beautiful Alaskan huskies,� she said. “She likes me to run them. For 45 minutes. It’s great for keeping my weight down, but people tend to yell things like ‘Hey, did you forget the sleigh?’ �

The 3-year-old Royal Unpacking Service, founded by former actress Gloria Booth and staffed entirely by older women, will also take care of pets, in a private home, for clients who are moving.

“Although sometimes the pets are right there in the house while we’re unpacking,� said Siri Richar, Royal’s director of operations.

One of Royal’s clients, a businesswoman, has a snake, two birds, three cats, two dogs and three children.

“She was away at work when we began unpacking,� Richar recalled. “But, with the exception of the snake, who was in a cage, the rest of them were dashing in and out. Oh, and there was painting and carpentry going on, too.�

As soon as they had the upstairs finished, she said, they put the children and animals in the bedrooms and shut the doors.

“And then we came downstairs and did that.�

Moving can be so time-consuming, and so onerous, says Richar, that many people unpack only what they need and have a garage stacked with unpacked boxes for as long as a year.

‘Feels Wonderful’

“It feels wonderful to walk into a home where everything’s done; where all the beds are made, and the cabinets lined with tile, and the linen folded, and fresh flowers everywhere,� said Royal client Pat Heder. “Because of my husband’s Army career, we’ve moved 30 times in our married life.�

“And it never seems to get any easier,� Sam Heder said. “But this last move, to Vista, was the first time we’ve had an unpacking service. We were organized in two days instead of the usual three months.�

Linda Swanson, who hired The Stowaways unpacking service in April, says that, looking back to her move from Orange County to North County, she has no idea how she would have got through it without their help.

“I work for Dale Carnegie, assisting at teaching seminars, and my work often lasts from early morning until late in the evening. I didn’t have time to move,� Swanson said.

An unpacking service is often given as a gift, said Sara Korman, the mother half of The Stowaways. (The daughter half is Leesa Rouch.)

“A few weeks ago, two friends of ours, Bill and Kay Marsh, moved from Cardiff to Pittsburgh,� she said. “Bill, keeping everything a secret from Kay, arranged for us to fly out to Pittsburgh, spend a night in a hotel, and then show up on the doorstep of their new home at the same time the moving van rolled up. We get a lot of hugs in this business.�

“You do feel like hugging someone who helps you to get organized,� said Sheila Lipinski, who recently hired Mary Ann Lessley of Creative Organizing.

Lipinski is a homemaker and a volunteer with the American Cancer Society, the Children’s Asthma League, and the Salk Institute.

“Because I keep track of so many things, my home office had turned into a ‘Little Room of Horrors,’ � she said. “The rest of the house was fine, but in my office I was drowning under a sea of papers.

“When I told my husband that a professional organizer was coming in, he said, ‘You’re going to let someone see that room?’ �

Often Embarrassed

Lessley says she has had experiences similar to Schechter’s, in that her clients are usually very bright people who are often a little embarrassed at having to call in an organizer to “untangle� them.

“So I usually start off by telling them that I’ve seen much worse,� she said.

“This is the age of the overextended person,� said Salima Din, founder of The Executive Concierge.

Kenya-born Din, former concierge of the Westgate Plaza Hotel for 18 years, founded a business seven months ago in which she placed desks offering concierge services in the lobbies of high-rise buildings.

“It frees people from time-consuming drudgeries,� Din says of the 27 services offered, including dry-cleaning, shoe-cleaning, film developing, car-washing, travel arrangements, catering and baby sitting.

She has six desks in buildings now, “but I’ll have 10 by the end of the year. And then I’m franchising nationwide. This was the perfect time to start a time-saving business. People want to be pampered now.�

Growing List

Proving that point, Schechter’s list of helpers has grown appreciably.

“I discovered Picnic People when I saw one of their vans waiting at a red light,� she said. “The Stowaways told me about an errand-running business in Rancho Santa Fe called H.E.L.P. And I discovered Anything Goes--Almost in the Yellow Pages, listed under ‘Errands and Odd Jobs.’ �

The Yellow Pages, she said, are a fairly good source for time-saving services.

“But, unfortunately, you have to spend time hunting for them,� she said. “There’s no listing--yet--under a collective heading of ‘Time-Savers.’ �

Schechter herself is listed under “Personal Service Bureaus,� a fact that once prompted a call from a very young-sounding male who asked her if she provided girls to go out on dates. (“Which is about as personal as you could get, I guess,� she said, laughing.)

For anyone particularly interested in becoming more organized, Schechter added, the National Assn. of Professional Organizers (P.O. Box 36E02, Los Angeles CA 90036) will send a list of its members to anyone who sends a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

“Many of its members specialize in one area,� explained Schechter, whose own specialty is organizing the homes of the blind. “Some organizers just do kitchens. Or closets. Or medical forms.�

How much do such services cost? It was hard for many of the San Diego area firms to quote prices because they work according to a client’s individual needs. The Stowaways, though, charge $30 an hour for both packers. And Doorstop Diets cost between $36 and $100 a week for three meals a day on the “900-calorie plan.�

Sheila Lipinski, owner of the former “Little Room of Horrors,� has a favorite anecdote about the joys of being organized:

“Earlier this summer, I was sitting at my tidy desk, surrounded by my tidy files, when my 15-year-old son came in and said he’d found a job.�

Could he, her son wanted to know, have his birth certificate?

“I went straight to my files and pulled it out. Before I got organized I would have said something like ‘When do you need it? Give me two months’ notice’ My life is so much easier now.�