Managing Your Home Like a Business with Kelly Hubbell

#284 - Can hiring a house manager and a meal prep chef really transform your life? In this compelling episode, Teresa Hildebrand sits down with Kelly Hubbell, the visionary founder of Sage Haus, who shares her personal journey from burnout to balance. Kelly opens up about her experience of reclaiming her time and energy by outsourcing household tasks, which not only improved her well-being but also ignited a passion to help other moms do the same. Together, they discuss the concept of home systems that promote an equitable division of labor, reduce stress, and ultimately lead to a happier, healthier family life.

Managing your home like a business? It might sound unconventional, but Kelly explains how this approach can lead to significant improvements in both your personal and professional life. Learn practical tips for integrating household help into any budget, whether it's through existing services or creative solutions like hiring local teenagers as mother's helpers. This episode is packed with actionable insights designed to empower mothers, help them avoid the pressure of doing it all, and find effective support solutions. Tune in to discover how you can create a more balanced and satisfying home life by strategically outsourcing household responsibilities.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:09

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. All right friends, welcome back to another episode of Organized Chaos and, if you're new here, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 0:46

So today I have a really special guest with me. I have Kelly Hubbell, who is here to talk about outsourcing the mental load of motherhood. Okay, so who is Kelly? Kelly is a mom of three and founder of Sage House, a platform helping busy parents reclaim their time and energy by outsourcing the mental load and creating home systems for a more equitable division of labor. Her goal is to help moms on any budget get the support they deserve so they can feel more present in everything they do, whether it's spending time with their family, growing their business or doing the things they love. She's doing this through small group cohorts, direct recruiting placements for executives and digital courses. Kelly, I'm so happy you're here with us and tell us a little bit more about you and how you got to helping moms reclaim their time and energy.

Speaker 2 1:38

Yeah, well, dude. Well, thanks so much for having me here. This is a lovely way to spend some time. So much for having me here, this is a lovely way to spend some time. So I basically started Sage House very organically. The way that I got here is through my own experience in outsourcing and offloading.

Speaker 2 1:58

So what I mean by that is when I became a mom. I think you know, like many moms, we come into motherhood with a lot of gusto and a lot of I'm going to be a do it all or I'm going to be the mom who can balance everything. And, um, and I think you know I was able to hold pretty strong on that until my second came, and then things really started falling apart. Um, and what I mean by falling apart is I was feeling so overwhelmed and burnt out at all of the things I was managing in addition to taking care of my family and managing a full-time career, and what I realized is that there were a lot of things I was doing that didn't have to be done by me, and um, that I really valued those short windows of time in the morning before work and school drop-offs, in the evenings before bedtime and then on weekends, and I, I realized I didn't really want to be spending those precious hours with that I could be spending with my family on things like household chores and running errands and unloading dishwashers and laundry, and so, um, basically, I found some incredible people.

Speaker 2 3:14

I call them my village and it's the combination of a house manager Some people call them family assistants and a meal prep chef who drops healthy food at our home once a week, and it was so life-changing that other moms started reaching out to me and asking me how, how did I find these people? What did they help me with? Um, you know, basically a lot of questions around hiring, but also the systems I put in place to allow them to help me. And so that's kind of how Sage House was born. Was just me wanting to share the wisdom, I guess, and experience for, you know, finding your village and people to support you in your lifestyle? And so I'm I'm now, you know, full-time on Sage House and I House and I'm working with a lot of different families to help them reclaim their time and outsource the mental load, and it's been really fun, it's been really insightful and I'm really enjoying it.

Speaker 1 4:21

I love that story and I always find that the best businesses that are created are based off of the struggles that we've gone through, and either people come to us and that we can actually create a template of that and pass it on to others. So I love your story and there's probably moms listening right now, thinking, man, I wish I could have like my own personal chef and I wish I could have like a pet sitter or a nanny or somebody to do my laundry. Like that just seems so crazy to think about. But that's why you're here, because you're going to talk about that. And you're going to talk about, first off, what home systems are, but also kind of like the accessibility of it. All right, because you know you're probably thinking you're listening right now Like, okay, there's no way I can have somebody come and do my laundry or somebody come and actually drop off meals. Like that just seems like a dream, something that that is not possible for me. So let's start off with the home systems. Like what is a home system?

Speaker 2 5:38

Sure, yeah, and I'm so glad you brought that up, because my, you know, my goal is to. I think this topic requires a lot of context, and that's exactly why we're having this conversation today. Um, you know, my goal is to help busy parents realize that it is more affordable and approachable and attainable than they probably think it is to get more help on a day to day. So, yeah, let's um, we can get into like wait, this sounds so bougie, how can I make this real for my life? Um, and then, but we can also, um, yeah, let's start with home systems. So I realized, in fact, after I launched Sage house, that I had skipped a step. And what I mean is I I launched Sage house thinking, oh my gosh, um house manager has changed my life so much that every mom needs a house manager and deserves house manager and how can I find every single mom on the planet a five hour a week house manager, Um, and.

Speaker 2 6:38

But what I realized is I had skipped this step, which is you can't just hire someone and then expect your life to be changed. Kind of like you can't just download an app on your phone and, like expect to relieve the mental load. I think that what it takes is a really diligent sort of audit, if you will, of what you're doing today in your home. Like what's happening today. What are you doing? How are you spending your time? Your home, Like what's happening today. What are you doing? How are you spending your time and what are the things that maybe you want to be done, that you're that are like not being done? Like, for me, it was like I couldn't remember the last time I'd washed the bath mats, or like towels, Right, so it's like the all of those things. And and then it's creating systems around them. And what systems are? They're not checklists, they're not just to-do lists. What they are is really creating what is the standard of care for our family, what is the expectation around these roles, who is the owner of them? And basically really making a holistic system that sure it can be updated and revised, but it is a foundation for your family.

Speaker 2 7:46

I'll give you an example of a home system that I'm working on with my cohort right now. There are 10 women that are in this cohort and last week we talked about feeding the family and that system and it looks different for different families, but there are core aspects of that that you need to define as a family. One is what is our? How often do we want to be cooking home cooked meals? How often do we want to be eating out? How does that fit into our budget? If we could outsource this, what would that look like for our family? Who would coordinate that? It looks like creating a recipe box for the six go-to recipes that we, like our kids, eat, and that we have ingredients list ready to go so that when we're busy, we can pick the two meals of the week, make two of them, eat leftovers until Friday.

Speaker 2 8:39

It's basically creating a system. It's like maybe it's making a calendar of every Tuesday is taco Tuesday, every Friday is pizza Friday, so we know exactly what we're doing for dinner and it takes the mental load out of it. So that's an example of a home system. There's others that you know I work with my cohorts on like what is the laundry system? What are the daily routines? So morning checklist, evening checklist, what are the things we want to do? Weekly, monthly, seasonal chores? Those are systems that we create and we calendar and we make sure there are owners for getting done. So that's kind of like homes this. I know it sounds like a lot, but there are actually ways to. Once you get it down on paper, it actually is like really, it really feels like, makes you feel lighter.

Speaker 1 9:30

Yeah, it's the whole organization of it all, right. And you know you talk about mental load. It's really kind of just downloading that onto like a paper or or even like just talking about it out loud, because a lot of the things that you were talking about, it's all swirling around in our heads, Like you said the bath math, and I laughed because I was like, okay, when they start to smell, then it's time to put them in the washer, right Um. But there's all these little things that we, we don't really understand how much is weighing us down, right Um, because there are, especially if you're the type of person that I am, like everything is like okay, like I have to have everything organized and I have to have like and it has to be done by me, like I have this thing where I'm getting a little bit better at that. But it's really hard for me to kind of let go of things because I feel like, well, I can just do it right now. But then I don't realize that it's not just about the time that you're taking to do that, you know, x, y and Z thing right now, it's the time that you spent thinking about doing that thing for after during, you know it's just all of that and all of that accumulates with the many different tasks, that thing before, after, during. You know it's just all of that and all of that accumulates with the many different tasks that we have, right.

Speaker 1 10:50

So having systems is so important and I love the fact that you're you know you're taking pieces of it like the whole meal thing, right Having to think about. You know you have, let's say, a family of four. You have to think about how you're going to feed everybody and if everybody likes the same thing. If you know, in a perfect world, but usually that's not the case, so there's all these like intricacies, right. That really kind of weighs down. So I love, I love the fact that you have systems. So now let's get into like how this has actually changed your life and specifically outsourcing, because that's one of the things that I talk about as well, and I talk a lot about like the business related things and outsource, but when it comes to like home life, I'm still working on that. But how has that changed your life?

Creating Home Systems for Efficiency

Speaker 2 11:41

Yeah, well, first I want to just say, like I related to home systems, once you create the system, you can then offload it and outsource it and and start to let go of. This is the way I want it done and that's a huge part of like my programs and my my coaching for parents, which is like systems lead to proper delegation and onboarding of the kind of help that you need. So it's like think about it as like almost a um timeline, right, or like a. You know it's like a ramp, so you got to create the systems and then um, but to your point, yeah, in terms of outsourcing and how it's changed my life. I mean, I think when we consider running our home like a business, a lot of the same principles apply and they result in a lot more satisfaction for us in life, in our personal life, in our career life. I mean, for me, we ended up hiring a house manager right after, like I said, right after we had our second and it basically was it changed my life because, like you said, it wasn't just the fact that she saved me an hour going to the grocery store, she saved me the mental me running through what do we need at the grocery store I should check the pantry, I should go through the fridge and see what we're low on. And then I have to get to the grocery store and, oh, on the way home I might as well fill up the car with gas. And then I get home and I have to unload all those groceries and reorganize the pantry. I mean, knowing that that's just going to be done for me on a Friday so that we have all the ingredients to make French toast on Saturday morning, is like so worth its weight in gold for me and my family.

Speaker 2 13:36

And I think like the biggest, the biggest life change was feeling more present in everything I was doing, because that that to-do list wasn't just on repeat in my head. So when I was, when I was in work, when I was working, I could get in flow states. I could be really focused. I had less distractions. When I was in meetings, I could be like more, more paying attention and more engaged.

Speaker 2 14:05

When I was with my kids, I wasn't worried about, like you know, all of the things I had to do over the weekend to set us up for success.

Speaker 2 14:13

Instead, I was, like you know, looking for bugs in the backyard and like really feeling like I was there with them doing that, and so I think that's the biggest piece of it is it's not just the time. I mean sure it frees me up to like go get my workouts in for the week. Like the fact that I can work out for two or three hours during the week because my house manager takes over tasks is, first of all, amazing for my health. She also happens to watch our kids every Friday night for three hours so that my husband and I can do a standing date night. So it's been incredible for my marriage to be able to spend time with my partner and then, yeah, just feeling more present and I mean it's amazing. And this is why I am on a mission to help other families start small, even if it's just five hours a week, of giving you five hours a week. What would you do with five extra hours a week?

Speaker 1 15:12

Yeah, and I do want to go into that in a second, but I do want to go back to something that you said and I'm so glad that you pointed this out about home systems, and that is that you're creating the systems not necessarily for you to be able to do them.

Speaker 1 15:28

It's for you to have something that you can pass along to someone else, right, that you can delegate, so that way that portion of the task that you do can be done by somebody else when you're ready to do that, right? So it's not like, hey, you're just gonna like organize everything so beautifully in your life so that you can have more control over it, like that's, that's not the purpose, right? The purpose is to create a system so that you can actually easily give it to someone else, so that it frees you up, so time and energy wise. So let's go into how this can actually be possible for families, right, because how can it be that you can actually hire people or delegate an outsource task that you would normally do in your household or you know, whatever it is that you, you know, have that, that mental load, that all of that stuff going on in your head, like how is it that you can, um you know, do this in any budget.

Speaker 2 16:34

Yeah, um, happy to talk about that. I think one thing that I will mention before I get into that is part of what's so important about the home systems again is getting your partner on board too and collaborating with them, because that really creates a lot of buy-in and teamwork that I think a lot of partnerships right now are missing and I think there's still a lot of like gender division of labor issues that we're working on, and so so I just want to mention that, like, I think a huge part of this is working with your partner, getting buy-in from them, and then that kind of leads me to the way that I work with people to figure out how to work it into their budget is step. You know, I have a five-step method I call it the Sage House method for hiring and recruiting your village, and the first step is having a conversation with your partner about your budget. I think it's important to think through, you know, how many hours of $100 a week or $200 a week could buy you of like someone's time sort of in your area, wherever that is, you know, based on where you live. Um, I also think there are a lot of really creative ways to stretch your budget, so I'll talk about that for a second. I think one is, believe it or not, 80% of dual income households already have cleaning services. They have a housekeeper or cleaners that come once a week, once a month, something like that. I have found that some of my clients have simply asked their existing cleaners can you spend an hour folding laundry if I have it all done, and that saves them an hour or two in a week, and that saves them an hour or two in a week.

Speaker 2 18:28

I think having a mother's helper around to help you do things around the house is also a great way to sort of like stretch your budget. I know there's a lot of like teenagers who live in my neighborhood who are always sort of like posting signs about either babysitting or being a mother's helper. I think those are ones. I think again, there are ones. I think, um, again, there are a lot of kids on my street who want to walk my dog, and walking my dog for 30 minutes twice a day saves me an hour of time. So it's like finding people in your community who want to like help you and be a part of your village. I think is a way to just to find more support on your budget.

Speaker 2 19:08

Again, I think, when it comes to thinking about an investment in this, again, I think it's what is the opportunity cost of not having more help? And I think, particularly for entrepreneurs, like a lot of your audience, teresa is, you know, I'm I'm familiar with this. I'm starting a business right now. Like every minute of my day is so valuable for me that I want to be spending it either with my kids and my family or working on my business and growing my business and networking and connecting and finding partnerships and, you know, um uh, connecting with incredible podcast hosts like you. So it's like, I think, for entrepreneurs especially, it's hard. It's a big leap to say, wow, I'm going to outsource these things that don't need to be done by me, like unloading my dishwasher, doing my laundry, running my Amazon returns back to the store. But like, what would an hour be for you if you found a new client, if you spent that time on doing business development for you? Like you know, I think you've got to start thinking about, like, what are the opportunity costs?

Speaker 1 20:22

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, because we don't realize how much that can help and it, like it, allows us to really be creative as well. Because even if you're, you know you have that extra one hour time and you're not necessarily going to use that to extra one hour time and you're not necessarily going to use that to, you know, do some business development or, you know, do something for your business, it can still give you time to just sit there and like be able to create more or just like free your mind, give yourself some time to relax, because that's also okay.

Speaker 2 21:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:00

It's also okay to just do nothing. I mean, we do plenty around and sometimes I feel like I actually, when I coach other moms like that guilt comes in right, because you feel like you always have to be doing something, whether it's because you have to prove your worth or because you know you're just. You just feel guilty about not doing something, that's working towards something else, when in reality you really need space to just, you know, be in a quiet space or, you know, just give yourself me time right, as cliche as that sounds like, that will also pay off you, you know, in in dividends. So I'm so glad you brought that up this. We could talk about this all day right, I know.

Speaker 1 21:47

But I think you gave the listeners a lot of great information. If someone wants to check you out and find out more about what you do, where can they find you?

Speaker 2 21:58

Yeah, so I mostly hang out on Instagram at my sage house. House is spelled H a, u, s, so you could go follow me there. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm starting to be a little bit more active on LinkedIn, especially because I'm super focused on supporting especially working moms, who I think are feeling like I think every mom is feeling the the overwhelm, but I especially feel like working moms are, and so I'm on LinkedIn. Uh, kelly Hubble is my name.

Speaker 2 22:29

Um, you can find, you can follow Sage house too. And then I guess I would say, if you're interested in just starting, if you're just curious about what are some things I could offload or outsource, there are two ways to get started, and one is I've got a free five-day program and you can find that on my stand store. There's a link in my Instagram so you can get that, and then there is a free quiz on my website. So for those of you who are like, these are really crazy long lists that this woman is talking about. What does she mean?

Speaker 2 23:02

Um, there's an eight question quiz that when you click through it, it basically um results in a dashboard of all of the things you, all of the time you're spending right now managing your household, and then it also has a big, long list of all of the things you're probably doing. So that is like a conversation starting with your partner. That is just understanding like, oh my gosh, I'm spending 20 hours a week managing my household on top of my full-time job or raising children or all of these things. And so those are the places I would start.

Speaker 1 23:32

If you're just interested in next steps, I love that and I will add those to the show notes. So thank you so much for being here, kelly. This was such an amazing conversation. What would you say like? What are some encouraging words you would give to the listeners?

Empowering Mothers Through Support and Solutions

Speaker 2 23:49

Yeah, you know, I would just say don't be so hard on yourself, and you're not alone, you know. I think again, I think that we have false expectations being set on us, not just by ourselves, but it's a result of societal and cultural pressures that have been put on especially women, for a long, long time. And you know, we've been told that we can do it all and that we should be super moms. In fact, you know, we say that to each other like, oh, you're such a super mom. And I'm like, can we stop? Like we don't all want to be super moms, like I don't, you know, I want to, like you said, do nothing, I don't, you know, because it's better for my mental health. I don't, I don't, you know.

Speaker 2 24:32

So I think that, like, my advice is just, you're not alone, don't beat yourself up. Find solutions. Like I am such a solution oriented person. Like, yes, we can doom, scroll all day and be like, oh, parenthood and motherhood is so hard, I'm so overwhelmed. But like there are also a lot of solutions out there and Sage house has a lot of solutions. If, like, they work for you, they worked for me and my family, so they might work for you. And so I would just say like um, you know, don't get down.

Speaker 1 25:04

Go and seek solutions that work for you and your family. Yes, thank you, I love those. So thank you so much for being here. You know, if you guys take one, you know little tidbit of advice from this episode is that, like Kelly said, like you don't have to do it all, like I preach that all the time Like give yourself, you know, the space that you deserve. This can all be figured out and you'll find your flow right. It's just about like really seeking those solutions. So thank you again, kelly, thanks for having me.