Haven’t used it myself but I see them delivering in the neighborhood (ZH city) and the offer* looks quite fair IMO:
*16.90 CHF for a full portion, including delivery and every day sth else
It’s not a ‘private chef’ that comes to you and cooks for the whole week but they cook it at their place and then deliver. If you really want a private chef, of course price would need to be much higher (or you eat 7 days only lasagne).
Surely you’ll save money by picking up a Döner next door, or buying some precooked meals in a supermarket, but for long term that is often not healthy.
Unless you get meals delivered or cook pre-prepared/frozen meals, I don’t see these as a time-saver as food preparation is quite quick. You can prepare and cook many meals in less than 20 minutes.
An update on what we’ve done that has helped and stuck:
Increased cleaner frequency to once per week. We now basically don’t clean ourselves except the kitchen after cooking.
Cleaner also folds laundry and changes our bedding (we put the fresh sheets out)
Food services:
We eat food from these delivery services roughly 3 times a week.
Tried a few meal prep services: weekly food, allcook, every foods
Weekly food does fresh ready meals which we like, you can just stick it in the microwave so very time friendly, and you can buy different portion sizes. The larger portions are only marginally more expensive. For our family of 2 adults + 1 toddler, 2x 600g portions is enough for us to eat well and have a bit left over, which I like. The menu changes each week so there is variety. The food is always delivered on a Tuesday so best to have for midweek meals.
Every foods make frozen vegetarian ready meals that you have to heat in a pan yourself to finish the cooking. I was initially sceptical of the concept but the food is actually really tasty and we find it really convenient to always have some healthy and tasty meals on hand. Takes like 6-8 minutes to cook and just requires ripping the bag open.
All cook was tasty, but required a bit of work to cook ourselves (similar to every). They only offer standard portion sizes and we found 2 portions insufficient and 3 portions too much / quite expensive. In a sense this felt inferior to both every and weekly food, so we didn’t try it again after the second time.
Other food tips:
Online groceries: this made a huge difference, we get groceries delivered about every 5 days / whenever we are running low. We do sometimes go physically to the supermarket but only recreationally. This made a huuuge perceived difference
Frozen vegetables: we buy a lot of frozen vegetable mixes from the supermarket. This makes it really easy to add additional veg to any meal.
What didn’t really help:
Batch cooking: before having a kid I used to batch cook and freeze food, but now the organisational overhead and time to do that feels not worth it.
Other thoughts:
my main concern with buying prepared food vs cooking myself is the health impact. I feel that weekly food and every are probably good enough for us. Specifically, the ingredients lists are almost always only things I might cook with, no crazy additives etc which would be the case if you buy ready meals from coop or migros
time vs money:
it took me a while to get comfortable with spending money to save time. I spent so long being time rich / money poor that I fully internalized that e.g. getting a cleaner or outsourcing chores is a form of wasteful consumption
however above a certain income level, it doesn’t make sense to do certain things yourself if you can outsource them for cheaper, provided that you could use the extra time to increase your earnings
for me that point became glaringly obvious when i had a kid and didn’t have enough time to do all the work I wanted + kid stuff + chores.
I don’t work billable hours so there is no direct “more with time => more income” but it probably impacts promo and career advancement
Good for you to have a setup that works for you. Did you stick to the monthly 0.5 - 1k budget, or did that change over the year?
I went a different route and reduced work time. That’s rather earning less and not optimal financially. Best mix depends on the perspective on things and what you enjoy doing, of course.
In this equation:
I’ll enjoy getting employment to 0
Still happy to out-source some on- and off work around the house. It isn’t even cheaper, but the result will certainly be better when done professionally.
On the other hand, I’d consider some activities like doing groceries, cooking or even cleaning not merely chores, but also family time and welcome routines.
Maybe that’s what you meant with “recreational” chores.
Let’s not pretend a toddler is too helpful, but they get to join in. Not always with joy, but that’s life
we pay something like 300 per month for the cleaner, and around 500 per month for the prepped meals (maybe less if you factor in paying less for groceries)
totally agreed on that, and wouldn’t want to give my kid any crazy unrealistic expectations about life, but i feel there is still ample opportunity for these things with our current setup
The biggest time saving hack that money can buy is a strategically located apartment. Typically close to train stations you will have everything: waking distance from office, groceries, Kita, doctor/dentist, restaurants, prime meeting point to hang-out with friends.
Sometimes I’m tempted to move into a big suburban villa but then I calculate how much time would be wasting in public transport/car/bike and concludes that it’s not worth it.
Is this for weekly work? How many hours work is done per single time?
Also do you leave stuff as is( eg. coffee cups in sink) or do some pre-clean?
We pay like 100/3h and then my wife insist that we mush put all dirty stuff away. Which for me almost becomes as surface cleaning only. Not sure if we are not overpaying for what we get.
Price: 33.-/h is a good deal, in my area 45.-/h is normal.
Precleaning: a level of tidiness is just common sense and politeness — I’d say adults and children should put their own things away and not leave clothes and toys lying around, etc. If that’s not done, the work will take a lot longer, which is fine, but it needs to be discussed and priced accordingly (as for cleaning outdoor areas, cleaning inside things like the fridge or closets, tidying up, folding clothes, etc.).
oh yeah now you made me redo the math and see that we actually pay like 600/month!
45/hour, 3.5 hours per clean, once per week = 630 per 4 weeks
we try to tidy up before she comes but it’s not perfect, mostly the point is to put stuff away that she would not know where to put. probably 30 mins of tidying on top of what we do every day after dinner to tidy the kitchen (which i would outsource if i could..)
Mit dem Lesen und der Teilnahme an diesem Forum bestätigst du, dass du die Forum-Richtlinien gelesen hast und damit einverstanden bist sowie den Haftungsausschluss auf http://www.mustachianpost.com/de/ akzeptierst.
