Cool or Not Cool: Paying Someone $1000 to Pack Your Kid for Camp

Image credit: David McGlynn via NYPost.comPaying someone to do your coop shift because you’re suspended and in so deep with make-ups you’ll never dig yourself out and you’re going broke buying “fancy lemons” at Union Market? Of course! No brainer. Completely cool. Paying a professional organizer with an expensive blowout to pack your kid’s camp trunk? Not so fast!

Throwing money at a problem is nothing new. Most of us, if/when we can afford it, would opt for that route. Throwing money at a hassle, though? I’m a mother of a sleepaway camper, and packing for camp IS a hassle. Basically, you have to sleep hanging off the edge of your bed for a couple of days, because all your kid’s camp shit is arrayed all over your bed as you check your list, once (do we have the thing already or do we have to buy it?), twice (is it now among the bed piles?), a third time (did it make it into the duffle?).  Oh wait! Is it labeled? And at first you might be quite organized (t-shirt pile; towels pile; pre-addressed, pre-stamped postcards-that-will-never-be-sent- pile), but soon enough, you’re just throwing more crap into a meaningless jumble – oh fuck, a water bottle! Oh crap, sun screen! Jesus H. Christ, where are the flip-flops! And then you have to yell at your spouse who was supposed to pick-up the Dr. Bronner’s all-in-one-body-wash-and-and-shampoo and forgot. And then you have dig through your sheet supply and lament the fact that no one in with your gene pool has ever experienced a 1000-thread-count sheet, much less bring one to camp.

Ok, so I wake up screaming from camp-packing-nightmares. So, yeah, as I relive the trauma, I can see the appeal. But … with the DIY method comes a war story, a bonding experience, as you see your parent friends at camp drop-off. “Oh, my god, the packing,” you’ll kvetch. “I know! And he won’t help! The list says he’s supposed to help,” your similarly-scarred friend will retort. “Yeah, right [thumb over your shoulder in the direction of your ne-er-do-well non-packing camper]. Like that would ever happen.”

So… cool or not cool? Avoid a huge hassle vs. a that-which-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger experience?