Before Christmas, I wrote about by ideal gifts. The ultimate treat would not necessarily be the usual flowers and chocolates (although they are very nice) but for someone to come and do a deep clean on the house, valet the car, tidy the loft. So what if you could find a reliable, local person to come and do bespoke jobs as regularly as you need or can afford? Task Rabbit spotted a gap in the UK market to quickly match individuals wanting to offer their services locally and launched in Brighton towards the end of last year.
Task Rabbit vets and recruits local ‘taskers’ who have experience and skills in a number of areas, be it cleaning, simple household repairs or a personal assistant to help with administrative tasks or even staff an event you’re organising. Using their website, you create an account and follow their step by step questionnaire giving details of the job you 
need doing plus the date and time you would like them to come. The site displays local taskers, you can view their job history, their rates per hour, their other service offerings plus where they are based. You’re not obligated until you have booked the job.
If you’re looking to become a tasker, you must create an account, read their handbook and pass a quiz on procedure, customer service, safety and billing administration. You are then ready for the Task Rabbit marketplace! Complete your profile with succinct details of your specialist skills and get ready to be contacted.
The downside is Task Rabbit take a whopping 20% service charge from your earnings, which is higher than other freelancer sites (who take around 3-4%) and a lot more expensive than offering your services on Gumtree. You would need to weigh up this cost vs. the opportunity for regular work via the website and the ‘vetting’ service they offer clients for piece of mind. Not to mention the work could be very near to your home, so could offer a good work/ life balance, as there would be no excessive commuting. The service charge could be worth it if you get a steady stream of income you’ve been looking for.
We had the lovely Kurt come to clean our oven. He has a background in catering, 
so has experience in cleaning industrial size appliances. He proudly told me this was the first job he done using his skills for his own profit (rather than part of his regular duties in his catering work). He very adeptly took the oven door apart to clean thoroughly between the glass. He soaked the oven shelves with extremely baked on food and got them gleaming! It was as if we had a brand new oven. I would most certainly hire him again.
For a self-employed person, such as myself, my revenue stream isn’t always regular and fluid. So when work is quieter, I can find time to do these jobs myself and can’t afford a cleaner. But my work means I have periods of time where I’m doing 12 hour days, travelling and some non-urgent cleaning jobs get pushed down the list of priorities after kids, school, nursery, family and catching up with friends. Many cleaning agencies ask for a commitment of 3 hours a week, which we simply can’t afford every month. So Task Rabbit is ideal for families like ours to help out if and when we need.
