Today’s Hint: How to Hire a One-Task Mother’s (or Father’s) Helper

I barely chatted with any of the guests at my daughter’s first birthday party because I was too busy watching my daughter and serving food. My mother and husband also didn’t have much time to socialize, as they were barbecuing and helping me prepare food.

If only I had done what my friend did recently for her son’s first birthday party: Hire a TaskRabbit to help out. For $65, my friend hired a person from TaskRabbit.com to pick up the food ordered for the three-hourish park playground party, set up, man the food and drinks table and then clean up.

Turns out, TaskRabbit.com is a great place for finding someone to help with that one-off baby- or kid-related chore you need done, so that’s why today’s hint is to use TaskRabbit to hire a one-task mother’s helper. At the site, a sort of eBay for tasks, you can post a job and then TaskRabbits bid on it. The TaskRabbits, who often are people with a passion for putting furniture together or organizing, go through background checks before they are able to bid on jobs.

It seems like some parents beyond my friend have embraced the service as a relatively cheap way to find temporary help. On TaskRabbit, I found posts from parents asking for help with everything from assembling cribs, setting up nurseries and installing baby gates to organizing baby clothes by age, cleaning baby items before birth, helping out with birthday parties and of course, being literal temporary mothers’ helpers.

One mom with a four-month-old baby, for instance, posted a job for a “Mother’s Helper,” asking for two hours of help one Saturday “getting stuff done around the house,” including light housework, unpacking and tidying up. Meanwhile, another mom with the flu posted that she needed a female mother’s helper for the evening to help her with a two year old and a messy kitchen. You also can even use the service to find someone to complete “do-it-yourself” kid-related projects for you (like Rookie Moms’ Heather Flett did when she tested out the site for a host of tasks and had a TaskRabbit build a puppet theater for her kids).

So far, I’ve only used TaskRabbit once. For part of my husband’s Father’s Day present, I hired a TaskRabbit to put together a new grill that my husband and I could never muster up the strength to spend our precious weekend time putting together. We paid the TaskRabbit, who was very professional and well-reviewed, $62 (plus tip) and the time we saved was worth every penny. So while I’ve never used the site for a baby-related task, I’m so happy my friend gave me the idea and I definitely plan to do so going forward.