SitterCity and my Possible Salvation
May 16, 2008 | by Jennifer Gniadecki | Filed Under Family, Parenting, Work/Life Balance
I keep talking about how nuts the toddlers are making me, and getting out once a week with my friend D just isn’t enough for me to keep it together.
That was before more and more writing assignments started piling on my to-do list (no, I’m not complaining, just putting it into perspective). I was a member of SitterCity last year and we used the service many times, with mostly amazing success. Even the sitters we did not consider a rousing success never made us feel that we were bad for leaving our kids with them, we just knew there were better sitters out there for us - mostly because we really lucked out the first few times and that poor fourth girl didn’t stand a chance (she was younger, too, really was quite a nice girl.)
I thought our membership had expired and didn’t visit the site anymore, until yesterday, when I received an email from a sitter asking if we were looking for help. I called my husband, let him know our account was active and we had a sitter that wanted to meet! We realized it’s been far too long since we’ve been out on a date and reminded each other how we swore we were going to go on weekly date-nights after he got his full-time job.
So a sitter falling into my lap was seen as serious not-coincidence by both of us.
The SitterCity site has been redesigned since I was last using it and the changes are for the better. It’s a simpler, more streamlined site and it’s really easy to find all the information about sitters you could ever need.
From Amazon-style "star ratings" with comments, to background checks and pictures, you’re really able to get enough information to feel secure in your sitter decision. Plus, they’ve all been really willing to meet before actually watching my kids, so I can get a feel for them and we don’t have that weird awkward moment when they first come in and you’re rushing to get out of the house and you have to do the whole nice-to-meet-you b.s. on top of it.
They also list religious preferences as well as if they’re CPR certified or have experience with special-needs kids. You can put up an ad for a sitter job and people can apply (a la Craigslist) or you can do a search and send emails or call sitters you feel you’d be a good match with.
I have my appointment with K on Monday night. I’m driving to her part of town because she’s nice enough to meet me for free, I figure it’s the least I could do.
Really, she used proper capitalization and grammar and punctuation in her emails, so I already have a good feeling about it. I’ll let you know how the meeting turns out.
I love summer. All the sitters are home from school and everyone else is bored and looking to make some extra cash. Yea!
SitterCity is also going to be our choice for finding a petsitter when we go to San Francisco for BlogHer in July. Cause yeah, they have petsitters and elder care people and…well…any kind of sitter you might need. I heart them. They’re also a local Chicago-based company, even though now they’re all huge and Internet based and International at this point.
You know what, you were just surfing the ‘net anyway…why not pop in your zip code and see for yourself!
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i SOOO hear you. I just hired a babysitter to come in once a week and am thinking of having her hre 2X a weeks just so one day I can clean top to bottom and the other day just write. I’m not just a mommy (repeat in front of mirror).
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