checking chores off the list with taskrabbit.

This post is sponsored by TaskRabbit, an online service matching freelance labor with individual demand.

Painting the nursery that we’ve been rearranging to accommodate two kids has been high on my list of things to do this fall. The flat white walls that we always knew were problematic revealed themselves to be even more filthy than we’d realized after we started shifting things around. Two years worth of tiny fingerprints streaked the surfaces—not to mention our moving furniture revealed streaks and stains that we hadn’t been able to see before. Without a painted surface that was washable, my scrubbing was in vain and I was hankering for a fresh start in anticipation of welcoming another kid into the room. When TaskRabbit reached out to ask if I would use their service and share the experience in this space, I knew immediately that painting the nursery was the task I wanted someone else to check off my list. 

A bit of background: TaskRabbit is an online service that helps match customers’ needs for household chore completion with someone who’s able to get the job done. The service pairs freelance laborers—fixers, painters, cleaners, movers, et cetera—to the folks looking to hire them. Through the TaskRabbit website or app, customers can hire experienced professionals to work on specific household projects ranging from putting together furniture, to hanging artwork, to making repairs, to rearranging a room, to washing the windows, or cleaning behind the refrigerator. You name it, and you can probably hire a TaskRabbit Tasker to do it. Maybe best of all, Taskers are trained and vetted by the company and regardless of the task, the service includes the TaskRabbit Trust & Safety, a one million dollar insurance guarantee against damage.

On the day of our scheduled task, our Tasker, Denis, arrived promptly and worked throughout the day to the get the nursery into order. A rental for who knows how many decades, this attic room has seen its fair share of repairs over the years and none of them have been approached with a particular attention to detail. Walls with four different textures, woodwork with unknowable layers of paint, and more painted over telephone wires than you could shake a fist at, were some of the issues that Denis approached pragmatically and professionally, and yes, with an attention to detail. While he was’t hired to fix half a century of neglect to the space, he was able to make simple improvements—patching rough spots, filling nail holes, unearthing ugly wires from the baseboards—that freshened the space and created a clean and crisp canvas.

It’s a truism that tackling projects of this sort in a small, city space can be complicated. There’s the physical space to consider—moving furniture out of one room, of course means cramming into the only other one. And there’s the question of supplies. We don’t have much room to stash a lot of equipment, but buying new for a single project feels wasteful from a thrift and trash perspective. Add a pregnancy and a toddler to the mix and you can understand my delight at the idea that we could hire someone else to tackle the project for us and to bring the supplies to do it.
We chose the paint, a very subtle shade of white with pink and brown undertones: Benjamin Moore’s Natura Paint in Calm OC-22. To make sure it was washable, I opted for an eggshell finish. For the trim I had Denis use Benjamin Moore’s Natura in Simply White OC-117 in semi-gloss. The result isn’t shocking, but it’s definitely calming. Which is, of course, exactly what the little space needed to begin with.

And maybe more importantly, the experience itself was calming. I’m the first to admit that I like doing things myself. A childhood spent watching my own mom and dad make repairs to our ancient house instilled in me a pretty strong do-it-yourself ethos. But I don’t have a power drill in this tiny apartment for hanging a tiny coat rack securely. I don’t have a long-handled paint roller or paint tray to make quick work of a big job. I don’t have the experience of having completed nearly 100 jobs in other peoples’ homes in less than a year. Denis? Whelp. He did have those things. And he got this job done in a single day so we could have everything back in order before bedtime. I’m not afraid to admit that that felt pretty great.

As we continue to ready the space for two, it’s such a comfort to know we’re starting with a fresh coat of paint. The better news? If there’s a task that you want to hire TaskRabbit to complete in your home, you can use the code TEALEAVES to get $25 off any task. Good through October 31, 2016.

This post was sponsored by TaskRabbit. Benjamin Moore provided the paint. All opinions are my own. Thanks so much for supporting the brands that support original editorial content on Reading My Tea Leaves.