As a working mom of 5, cancer made life unmanageable. I decided to pay for extra help around the home — but it didn’t come cheap.

My husband and I have five kids, ranging in age from 2 to 10. He and I both have full-time jobs, and I run a business. By the time we pick up our kids from day care, we have only enough energy to spend a few quality hours together as a family before crashing in bed and starting again the next day.

And then I was diagnosed with cancer.

With that diagnosis, my already-hectic life reached a new level: unmanageable. I felt like I was constantly playing a game of Whac-a-Mole and losing. The mountain of laundry grew higher than my toddler. The dishes backed up for multiple meals as we rushed from doctor’s appointments to work to sports carpool. It was time for a change.

Getting a serious illness was the beginning of a journey toward offloading some tasks and doing the hard thing: asking for help. In many cases, that meant paying for an extra hand. I started to hire mother’s helpers, Instacart shoppers and a regular cleaning professional to help around the house. In the process, I realized that you can alleviate some of the mental load of parenting — the never-ending caregiving, the invisible tasks that bleed into work and leisure time — but it will cost you.

What delegating costs

I’d tried passing more tasks off onto my kids, who I believe already do quite a bit around the house compared with some of their friends. But enforcing and redoing their work — my 7-year-old tends to load massive pots into the dishwasher, for example — was its own beast. It was all causing extra stress, at a time when I needed to be focusing on my health.

Earlier this year, with a series of scheduled surgeries being lined up to address my cancer, I decided to use some of our disposable income to hire help. I needed to train someone else to, well, be me for a few months.

Here’s what that outsourcing costs.

The quick pickup and laundry/dishes flip

I started paying a local stay-at-home mom who wanted a side-hustle $25 per day to come for one hour and “flip” the house. This entailed changing and sorting laundry, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, doing a quick pickup and a few other small tasks. In the summer, this prevented straight mayhem as I tried to work from home while all the kids ran around.

Grocery delivery

According to Capital One, 138.3 million Americans purchased groceries online in 2024. But it can be pricey. Over the years, I’ve paid varying fees for curbside shopping and delivery at my local grocery stores in Cincinnati, leaning on it more and more as my family grew. Now that I’m at five kids, I simply can’t find the two hours it takes to go to the store, shop and then put it all away.

There’s also Instacart, which, while convenient, comes with its own set of pickup and service fees, including about $4 for same-day orders over $35 and a $99 yearly subscription cost if you get Instacart+. Similarly, Amazon Prime — which I now use to order household essentials, from garbage bags to paper towels, is up to $139 per year.

Babysitting

The secret to a strong marriage after five kids? Date night (or at least running errands together without every single kid in tow). That means booking a babysitter, the cost of which runs from $25 an hour for a few kids to $30 an hour for all five of them. A three-hour date each week quickly added up to $400 per month.

A whole house clean

My kids can straighten up a bathroom, but I’ve yet to teach them how to mop, scrub baseboards or clean a toilet properly and other household skills. In the meantime, I’m getting help from an amazing house cleaner, whose weekly cleans (which typically take five hours for a four-bedroom house) cost $25 per hour. Total cost? $125 per week.

The delegating dilemma

Surprise, surprise: Outsourcing did indeed make it easier to get things done around the house and be a more present parent. Hiring help meant that the gnawing feeling that I was in this alone eased. When I’d walk past a pile of clean laundry that needed sorting, I didn’t feel isolated, like it was just my burden to bear, or that I’d have to remind someone to do it. I could physically feel the mental load lifting.

But the expense involved brought its own form of pressure, which left me wondering: Can you really buy peace of mind?

Michael Conticelli, financial adviser and founder of Solutions Money Management in Florida, says there’s no “silver bullet” when it comes to figuring out what’s worth paying to delegate to others. What’s more, he adds, “The more financially strapped you are, the more emotionally tied you become to each decision, only adding to the emotional load,” he tells me.

“Most often, your priorities are going to come down to your values,” Conticelli adds. Some parents might prefer to mow the lawn themselves so they can teach their kids the value of doing the hard work themselves; others might hire a lawn service and free up time for family bonding.

And there’s something to be said for handing over tasks you simply don’t want to do, says Jennifer Reid, a personal chief financial officer and financial manager for families in the Boston area. “Ask yourself: What brings you the most discomfort or stress? Would having someone help with this create more joy in your life?” Reid says.

Despite everything, I know I’m lucky to have been able to move things around in my budget — goodbye, streaming subscriptions and takeout Tuesdays — so I could pay to delegate these chores. It was a pricey decision, but one that gave me more agency over my time during a challenging season of life — and helped me feel a little less like a mom with five jobs and five kids.