Overstressed Families
Just Want to Stay Home

Michael Kempner is buying time.

Two years ago, Mr. Kempner ran himself ragged most weekends, driving around town doing errands. "I was totally on the run," he says. "I always felt stressed." But these days, he hangs around the house most weekends, doing puzzles with his three kids or watching sports on television. The difference? He now pays extra to have everyone from dry cleaners to car washers come to his house. "Life has become so compressed," he says, "that I decided my time with my family is worth more than money."

Now that we've journeyed all the way into the new millennium, a lot of us just want to stay home. Many families have become so overscheduled and overloaded that they're rebelling -- by not going anywhere. Exhausted from hectic work schedules, long commutes and family demands, people are increasingly reluctant to go out again, for almost any reason, once they get home. The hunker-down mentality is fueled by the fact that, thanks to the booming economy, many people now have the affluence to fund their stay-at-home fantasies.

As a result, more consumers are shelling out extra cash to have goods and services delivered, or paying other people to run their errands. Feeling that they have more money than time, some Americans are willing to pay a premium for the privilege of being a couch potato.

Mr. Kempner, owner of a public-relations firm, has found all kinds of businesses will come to his Cresskill, N.J., home -- for a price. His personal trainer, his car detailer, his wife's masseuse and his children's piano teacher all make regular visits. He bought his wife's birthday present from a jeweler willing to send a selection of watches for him to review in his living room. And last Friday, while others were out celebrating New Year's Eve, he had the party come to him: flowers, sushi, chips and salsa were delivered to his house.

"A year or two ago, I don't think all of these businesses would have been willing to come to my home," says Mr. Kempner, who says the convenience usually adds at least 5% to the price. "But now they're beginning to realize that busy people like me won't buy from someone who won't deliver."

Indeed, plenty of businesses, big and small, are capitalizing on the yearnings of stressed-out consumers to give up on gridlock and let the world beat a path to their doors. Making house calls can be lucrative, even for small entrepreneurs. Stephen Newman, who runs a come-to-your-house brake-repair service, charges up to $200 -- more than twice the rates the big chains offer. A car buff and former stockbroker from Fairfax, Va., Mr. Newman says his business has grown more than 25% during the past five years, so much that lately he's been turning new customers away.

Even the doctor's house call, pretty much a thing of the past, is starting to show signs of life: The American Academy of Home Care Physicians says its membership has doubled, to 700 members, during the past two years.

Certainly, the very rich have always enjoyed the convenience of having their tai-chi instructors or dog groomers come to their homes. But now, a whole new group of people can afford -- and are willing -- to pay for such pampering. Priscilla La Barbera, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University, regularly has an $80 hour-long massage in the privacy of her one-bedroom apartment. At first, she felt it was "self-indulgent." But after a few sessions, she realized how much more she enjoyed home massages than those done in spas, and stopped feeling guilty about the expense. "Afterwards, it's so relaxing not to have to get dressed and go back out into the elements," says Ms. La Barbera, who often drifts off to sleep on the portable table the masseuse sets up in her living room.

In recent years, there's been a "societal shift" in the way people view the worth of their free time, says Ms. La Barbera, and the market has responded. "So many things can be ordered through one toll-free call," she says. "And people are beginning to realize that their time has real value."

The strong stay-at-home sentiment has been a perfect fit for the Internet. Online shopping and Web-based delivery companies play right into the batten-down-the-hatches mentality, which has fueled their growth. According to Jupiter Communications, an Internet research firm in New York, online grocery purchases increased more than 50% since 1998, to $233 million, and should continue to rise rapidly, reaching a whopping $7.5 billion in 2003. While it remains to be seen how many of the new Web-based delivery services will actually survive, it's clear they've tapped into a well of pent-up feelings.

Streamline.com, a Westwood, Mass., delivery service that went public in June, thinks there's money to be made in doing "necessity-based, menial shopping," says Chief Executive Timothy De Mello. For a flat charge of $30 a month, the company delivers groceries, as well as dry-cleaning, repaired shoes, rental videos, fresh flowers, stamps, processed film, bottled water and prepared meals (home-office supplies and liquor soon will be added). In the past four years, the company's customer base has grown to 4,000 households from 200; its revenue for the quarter ending in October 1999 more than doubled, to $3.62 million, from the same period a year earlier -- although, like most Web companies, it has yet to show a profit. "We're banking on the idea that people want to offload a lot of boring activities," Mr. De Mello says.

Time With the Kids

The idea of paying someone else to do the routine stuff is especially appealing to two-career couples. "My day is completely scheduled, every single day," says Valerie Andrews, a Boston attorney, who has two preschoolers. She and her husband, also a lawyer, commute an hour each way to work, putting them under "real time constraints," she says. "I want more time to be with my kids, or work in the office."

Mrs. Andrews, a Streamline customer since 1997, says the system isn't without flaws -- occasionally an item has been left out of her grocery order, and the selection isn't as big as it would be in a supermarket. But on the whole, she thinks online shopping has made her more "systematic and efficient." And though she doesn't think the company's food prices are bargains -- she describes them as on par with upscale local markets -- she's noticed that her grocery bill has actually gone down during the past two years: "When you're buying food online, you can't be tempted with how something smells or looks, so you're less likely to buy it on impulse."

No task seems too special to hire out. At Your Service, a Burke, Va., company, says that during the holidays, several time-pressed customers paid the company to buy, address and mail stacks of Christmas cards -- complete with fake "personal" greetings and signatures. "It works well because most people don't know what their friends' handwriting looks like," says co-owner Stacey Both. For rates of $15 to $30 an hour, the company does all sorts of errands for customers, from taking the family dog to the vet to getting a car registration renewed.

Buying more free time is money well spent, some consumers say, even if they don't do much with it. Debra Thomas, a Houston public-relations consultant, pays a personal assistant $75 to run errands and do small tasks four hours each week, ranging from watering the plants to changing the cat litter. Handing off the petty chores gives her guilt-free time to relax, Ms. Thomas says, though she often spends it doing nothing more than lounging in bed and drinking a glass of red wine. "Before, I always had a sinking feeling each weekend that I should be doing this or that," she says. "Now, I just put it on the list for my assistant."

Back to the Future

The demand for home-based services has been building steadily in recent years, fueled in part by the increase in working women. Home-delivered meals -- first with the explosion of pizza deliveries, then with more gourmet fare -- kicked off the modern trend. But the trend, it turns out, is retro.

Although home delivery was common in the early 1900s, by 1954 it had fallen to 8.8% of food purchases, and by 1986 it was down to 1.2%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Home food deliveries have increased in recent years, thanks mostly to the delivery of prepared meals, climbing to 2.4% of total food sales in 1998. Other businesses picked up on the niche market for bringing things home; during the fitness craze of the '80s, for instance, personal trainers started holding aerobics sessions in customers' living rooms. By the time e-commerce arrived in the '90s, consumers were ready to be introduced, or reintroduced, to the idea of home delivery.

As Americans begin to rely more on outsiders to deliver goods and services rather than their own efforts, life is starting to resemble the way things were in the early 1900s, according to Jagdish Sheth, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Then, even middle-class people relied on servants to provide most services, and nearly all merchants delivered their products. Those practices dropped away about the time of World War I, as servants and delivery clerks sought better-paying jobs in war factories. The move toward hired help and home deliveries began to revive during the past decade, he says, this time spurred not by the availability of cheap labor, but by the rising affluence of time-pressed consumers.

The Home Foreman

Of course, in addition to the extra cost, there are other downsides to having service workers come to your home -- like having to wait for them and check up on them. Mr. Sheth and his wife Madhu, who spend about $300 a week on such service providers as landscapers, maids, cooks and caterers, know this all too well. "My wife is like a foreman at a factory," Mr. Sheth says.

But service workers aren't the only ones willing to come to their customers' doorsteps in this competitive, booming economy, Mr. Sheth adds. Some professionals are, too. "My accountant and my lawyer both come regularly to my house now," he says. "I think it's just a matter of time before my doctor will start making house calls again, too."

Indeed, Constance Row, executive director of the Home Care Physicians group, says its members report they're increasingly being asked to make house calls by relatives of their patients -- often baby boomers who are trying to care for elderly parents long-distance "and can't fly 1,000 miles to take their mothers to the doctor's office."

Dr. Wayne McCormick, a Seattle physician who's been in practice 13 years, makes about three to five house calls a week, to his most-frail patients. He thinks house calls will increase in the future, in part because of a recent increase in Medicare payments for such visits, but also because affluent boomers won't mind paying extra for the service. "I don't think our own generation will put up with doctors who don't make house calls," he says. Because of new, lightweight medical equipment, most of what he needs fits into a backpack, which he carries instead of a black bag. At a patient's home, he says he can do X-rays, IVs, blood-chemistry tests, ultrasound and many emergency procedures. Medical records are kept on his laptop computer.

Will the growing stay-at-home mindset bring families closer together, or just mean more hours zoning out in front of the TV? As a research experiment, Bruce Weinberg, an assistant professor of marketing at Boston University's Graduate School of Management, has been buying all his family's goods and services online since September. After shopping for everything from a hard-to-find type of glue to a used Rolls Royce (he bought one for $17,000), he's a convert to home delivery. "I used to enjoy shopping at regular stores, but this is far superior," he says. Initially, he thought he'd resent paying delivery charges for everyday items, but now says the "two or three dollars extra" on a typical $70 food bill is far outweighed by the three hours or so a week he saves by not having to drive to a supermarket near his Newton, Mass., home.

"I wasn't aware before how much my time is worth," he says. Now, he has more time to play with his two toddlers, and to spend with his wife, Amy.

Still, all the extra free time at home has had some consequences, Mr. Weinberg says with a laugh: "Amy just told me she's pregnant again."

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