"Things are tough all over" department:
Beth Rogers is taking the family's finances into her own hands — literally.
The 35-year-old from Fayetteville, Ark., ditched her weekly housekeeping service and now mops her own floors. She and her husband, Stanley, work in the yard after canceling their lawn care contract. She cooks at home instead of the family eating out, and she told her husband to iron his own shirts rather than send them to the cleaners. Total savings? About $10,000 a year.
[. . .]
Across the country, people are taking on chores that only a year ago were hired out to someone else. They're dyeing their own hair, shoveling their own snow, washing their own cars and taking up paint brushes to brighten their living room walls.
I guess it's fine that some people are now taking on the kinds of chores most of us have always had to do, but stop and think about the ripple effect. What about all those service providers who now make a living doing such menial chores for others? The last job my dad had was as a janitor for Parkview Hospital. Can you imagine if the doctors had decided to save a little money by mopping the floors themselves? My dad would have been out of a job!
