You’re trying to wrap up a work call while bagging your kid’s outgrown clothes when a ping comes in from a parent chat — soccer registration just opened and spots are filling fast. School pickup is in 10 minutes, traffic is building, dinner still needs to be figured out, and you cannot deal with one more thing.
For many Los Angeles families, it’s not one responsibility that is overwhelming; it’s the hundreds of them. The invisible labor can spill into strained marriages, chronic stress and the feeling of constantly treading water. But as it turns out, or perhaps as it should be, there’s a job for that. Some Angelenos are now hiring so-called house managers to shoulder the minutia.
“All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Oh, I have to hire somebody 20, 30 hours a week to get all this stuff done.’ That’s how much of my time it was taking before,” said David Rudy, talent manager, producer and father of 6-month-old identical twin boys who employs a house manager. “All of my friends that work in the same field … we have no idea what to do, because we’re drowning in logistics. We need everything, but we don’t know what that is.”
The rise of households with two working parents combined with frequent work travel and packed kids programming has created a demand for operational support, especially for those without family nearby to help. “You don’t have mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts and uncles … we needed help,” said Rudy, who moved to L.A. from New York.
House manager job postings are increasingly appearing on Indeed, Care.com or L.A.’s parent communities like PeachheadNanny, advertising pay of $25 to $45 per hour for 10 to 40 hours per week — signaling that the role is shifting beyond the super affluent to time-strapped dual-income families. The expense, which is similar to the cost of a nanny, may seem excessive, but stretching the family budget is worth the mental load relief for some parents.
House manager Sabrina Thompson handles administrative tasks and dinner prep, among other tasks, for Emily Adel and her family.
(Brittany Elizabeth Brooks/For The Times)
What does a house manager do? All the random things
A house manager comes into the home less like Mary Poppins — whose focus was on the children — and more like an octopus whose eight arms pick up all the essential pieces like scheduling overdue date nights, packing lunches, noticing the paper towels are running low or cleaning the cat litter. They’re not a house cleaner and they’re more than a nanny. While they do light cleaning, they typically draw the line at deep scrubbing, and they oversee not just the kids but all the details that keep a household running smoothly.
House manager Sabrina Thompson says she focuses on handling tasks before the homeowner notices.
(Brittany Elizabeth Brooks/For The Times)
Social media creator and mother of two Sophie Jaffe realized she needed help when her husband was traveling more for work and she found herself driving her kids to different activities across L.A. while managing her business and keeping the house afloat — all of which became logistically impossible.
Sophie Jaffe doing dishes with her daughter at home. She hired a house manager to remove some of the logistical pressure of home life while also working.
(Brittany Elizabeth Brooks/For The Times)
“I want to make money and I want to contribute to the family, but there’s literally no way I can do that. I can’t even keep the house in order,” she said. “So that was when it was kind of like do or die … and I advocated for myself, I mean, I was losing it.” She soon hired a house manager who would do anything that she herself would do if she had a clone. “If I had a body double, what would I need that person to do? Like, if I’m out doing all the runarounds, then she’s prepping dinner.”
Emily Adel, chief of staff at a publishing company, remembers watching her mom live a limited life, restrained by demands at home, never traveling even during her “best years.” She didn’t want to echo that. She hired her house manager to allow her room for joy and to be fully present with her 6-year-old daughter instead of worrying about whether they were running low on laundry detergent. “The most important change to highlight is the permission to feel like I deserve this help.”
The rise of house managers in L.A.
Kelly Hubbell, founder of Sage House, a house manager recruiting firm that serves L.A. families, is on a mission to democratize the job. “It is so common to have house cleaners, housekeepers … but why isn’t there someone that you can rely on as a second set of hands to do anything you would do for your family?”
The market may be catching up to a demand fueled by working mothers and intensified hands-on parenting. Hubbell’s business was born from tracking the tasks required to run her home and family. The list added up to an entire job — and a solution to the mental load.
Hubbell’s life changed once she hired a house manager — including improving her marriage. “It’s not that my husband and I weren’t splitting it equally. It was just the fact that there weren’t enough hours in the day. This is not a personal failing. It’s an infrastructure type problem and solution.”
Adel runs her home like she operates at work — she takes on the tasks that leverage her strengths and outsources anything else to her house manager. She enjoys doing drop-off and pickup, using the commute time to help her daughter navigate the kinds of human dilemmas she does professionally, while her house manager tackles dinner prep at home. “I think people could use help that is generalized, that sort of goes outside something that’s so specific and prescriptive.”
Emily Adel, right, and her family at home posing with house manager Sabrina Thompson, left.
(Brittany Elizabeth Brooks/For The Times)
Her house manager, Sabrina Thompson, both relieves the household logistics and prevents things from piling up, part of the job requirement. “In a lot of my feedback and check-in conversations, which we have about once a quarter, my ask is you walk around the house twice a week and just tell me what you think needs to change,” Adel said.
Like many house managers, Thompson started as a nanny and expanded into family home operations. “You have to think three steps ahead and you have to stay calm. You have to prioritize things quickly and adapt. So the main thing that I focus on is just handling things before the homeowner notices.”
Reflecting back on the homes she’s worked in, Thompson said the most rewarding part of the job is the recognition and appreciation she receives from the families. As a mother herself, she understands the value of relief. “I think every person out there needs a house manager because knowing things are being done at home — it relieves so much stress off of you, it’s insane. The things that you don’t have to think about means that you have more time for traveling, for family, for things that maybe you can’t do on a normal basis.”
Thompson said she often treats her own home like it’s another client. “If anything, being a house manager has made me more organized at home, but it can also be funny to spend all day managing someone else’s household and then come home to your own laundry and to-do list!” That’s why she’s intentional about working with clients who respect the boundaries she sets around her own time and family.
Could a house manager let you really have it all?
Sophie Jaffe, right, and her family pose in their backyard.
(Brittany Elizabeth Brooks/For The Times)
Paying for a house manager is thought of as buying back time you can reinvest. “Moms, women are like, ‘I’m realizing that I can have the support in my household, too, that allows me to keep this career I love and be present when I get home,’” Hubbell said, adding that she can now deeply immerse herself in her work. “I’m not thinking about, ‘Oh no, am I going to order the gift in time for the party on Saturday?’”
Initially, Jaffe struggled with paying for the support. “Back to the mom guilt — who am I to have someone full-time? A, in scarcity I can’t afford it, and B, I should be the one in the house doing all this stuff myself.” To cover the cost, she used money set aside for babysitters, cleaners and the occasional home organizer. “What is the cost that you would associate with enjoying your life and being present to it? I don’t even know what that price tag would be,” Jaffe said. Some AI-powered apps promise organizational services for busy families at a lower cost, but they can’t provide all the hands-on labor that a house manager does.
Hubbell advocates that the payoff is also about what you avoid losing. “You’re going to pay for it one way or another — in your relationships, in your health, mental and physical.”
Rudy now spends some of his reclaimed time binge-watching TV with his wife. “It’s opened up those little things that we took for granted and given them back to us.”
The missing piece of modern family life
The growing house management sector sheds new light on the unpaid home and childcare labor that has depleted many women, pushing them to exit the workforce. “We have so much on our plates all the time. Your brain never stops, even when you’re sleeping, it never stops,” Thompson said.
Several parents who employ house managers said they wish all families could afford one; that the benefit be seen as normal and not a luxury. “I don’t think this is just for the modern city. It’s for the modern family,” Rudy said. “It’s helping alleviate all of the invisible stress that exists. You don’t always see it, but it’s there.”
