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Modern nanny duties can encompass so much more than just childcare. In our household, our nannies’ roles are a combination of a nanny/family assistant/house manager. A large part of their responsibilities is still to support the kids, but they also perform errands and tasks that help the whole family thrive.
Below, I go over 14 examples of duties you can have your nanny take on outside of childcare. They may seem like small tasks — 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there — but all that time saved can really add up. And the real win of not executing the task yourself isn’t just the physical time saved, it’s also the mental space you free up by not being obliged to notice, remember, and plan to do the task.
Before we dive into these 14 nanny duties, I do want to address the one concern that always comes up when I talk about this: Is it fair to ask my nanny to do these things?
The key is to be upfront in the hiring process about what you’re looking for and to compensate them accordingly. As I go over in my article on How Much A Nanny Costs, you should pay $3-$5 more per hour (roughly $6,250-$10,400 more per year) when the job entails these extra nanny duties. Looking to talk to your current nanny about taking on additional tasks? Check out my guide, 6 Steps to Promoting Your Nanny into a Family Assistant.
Skip Ahead: Nanny Duties Beyond Childcare
Nanny Duties: Emptying The Dishwasher
Unloading the dishwasher is an easy, repeatable household chore for the nanny. Every night, we run the dishwasher. Then, in the morning, our nanny unloads it so us parents can focus entirely on connecting with the kids, not kitchen tasks.
The first time you delegate a household chore, like unloading the dishwasher, it will take more time while you give instructions and walk them through where everything goes. But trust me, that initial time investment will pay off.
Nanny Duties: Crockpot Meals
Before we decided to hire a personal chef, prepping crockpot meals was another part of our gloriously productive morning routine with our nanny. It looked like this:
- I made breakfast; the nanny emptied the dishwasher.
- I ate with the kids; the nanny started the crockpot.
- I got the kids ready; the nanny cleaned up breakfast.
Other light meal prep our nanny helped with was blending peanut butter protein balls that we use for snacks on the go. She’s also picked up fresh rotisserie chicken and spiced up a basic Caesar salad dressing from the store for an easy and delicious chicken Caesar salad.
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Nanny Duties: Transferring Dry Cleaning Hangers
My least favorite chore is transferring dry-cleaning clothes from wire to non-slip hangers. It’s not a typical household chore, but it’s either you putting clothes away while the nanny spends time with your child, or the other way around. I’d rather spend the time with my kids!
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Nanny Duties: Restocking Household Basics
Another one of our nanny’s duties is ensuring all of our household basics, like soap, toilet paper, dog food, and laundry detergent, are stocked up. We use Amazon’s Subscribe and Save for recurring deliveries of our household basics, and our nanny is in charge of managing it and adjusting the delivery frequency if needed.
After the items arrive, our nanny will also put them away, including refilling any soap dispensers if needed. We use LastPass to store all the login data she would need for our home maintenance accounts so she can make all the adjustments and order new supplies without having to check with us.
Nanny Duties: Watering Plants
Taking care of your houseplants is another easy, repeatable nanny duty that brings a little life to your home. Your nanny can water the plants with the kids as an activity or do it while they nap. Simply print a picture of each plant around the house with instructions for your nanny or housekeeper to follow. This chore is often done while I’m at work, so it becomes one less thing for me to think about when I come home to spend time with my family.
There are also services you can hire specifically to take care of your plants for you, as the New York Times wrote about recently. There was a lot of skepticism in the comments, but my belief is: You are allowed to enjoy plants, and not be the one who cares for them. It's okay to appreciate beauty and not maintain it every day yourself.
Nanny Duties: Flipping Diffusers
Reed diffusers are my secret weapon for making a room feel inviting. Flipping the reeds is not complicated or terribly time-consuming, but assigning that task as one of my nanny’s duties saves me a little thought equity. One less thing to keep track of is extremely valuable.
It should be noted that there are also electronic diffusers on the market that could eliminate this entire task. Personally, I’ve found that the places I want to put diffusers don’t have plugs handy, and I am not a fan of staring at a cord hanging down a wall. The Nest diffusers are simple and elegant, which matches my vibe! (I love Ocean Mist and Sea Salt in the bathroom and master bedroom, Himalayan Salt and Rosewater in the living room, and Cedar Leaf and Lavender in the den).
Nanny Duties: Changing Light Bulbs
Now you may be thinking…Really, you can’t change a lightbulb?! Of course, my partner and I are capable of changing a lightbulb, but this household chore usually involves a ladder and time searching the garage for the right bulb…it’s a whole ordeal we happily delegate to save us time and mental space. It has to be done, but I don’t have to be the one to do it.
One thing we did to make this task easier to assign to someone else was to have a home organizing company come in and clean out, organize, and label everything in our garage so that anyone can easily find a lightbulb (without asking you where they are). Proxy subscribers get up to 15% off our favorite home organizing solution nearest you.
Nanny Duties: Wrapping Gifts
I LOVE selecting unique gifts for friends and family, but the physical act of wrapping a gift feels like another household chore. It’s another great task to add to your nanny’s duties that they can sneak in between the children’s naps, or while you’re with the kids.
As a side note, if you are searching for the perfect gift, check out some of our curated gift guides:
- 16 Gift Ideas For A Nanny
- The 24 Best Gifts For Busy Working Moms
- 17 Gift Ideas For Your Daughter-In-Law (By Personality Type)
- 22 Gifts For Busy Dads
- The 21 Best Valentine’s Day Gifts For Dads
We take a lot of time to test everything we suggest in our guides, so even if you don’t need something today, keep us in mind for the next holiday or birthday. Or skip us entirely, and use a gift service that will find a unique and memorable gift, and then order, wrap, and send it for you with a handwritten note. Access Proxy for the best gift-giving service we’ve found and save 20%.
Nanny Duties: Cleaning Makeup Brushes
You’re supposed to wash your makeup brushes every 7-10 days to prevent breakouts and kill off any bacteria trying to grow on them. This is one of those tasks that’s so easy to let fall by the wayside when you’re a busy working parent. Suddenly, a few months have passed, and you realize that your brushes are disgusting!
I wish I could tell you that I have my nanny wash my makeup brushes every 2 weeks to keep my skin looking fresh to death, but the reality is I ask her to do this low-joy task once a month. This is also a task you can talk to your housekeeper about taking on if you have one.
Nanny Duties: Research Tasks
Your nanny can also take on tasks associated with a family assistant, like scheduling doctors' appointments, making dinner reservations, or researching summer camp ideas. We set up a house email account (LastNameFamily@gmail.com) and provided our nanny access to a computer so that she can easily find what she is looking for (compared to being cramped on a phone).
I am constantly assigning research-related tasks to our nanny. Most recently, our nanny found a private swim instructor, booked Belle to come to my 4-year-old’s birthday party, and researched an appliance repair company to service our ice maker. For even more non-childcare-related nanny duties, check out our most popular guide, 99 Tasks You Can Delegate Today (it’s free and downloadable).
Nanny Duties: Taking Out The Trash
Our nanny will empty the kitchen trash and take out the recycling if she notices they are full. She also takes the trash cans down to the curb each week on trash day, and brings them back to the side yard after the garbage truck has come by. Is this a typical nanny duty? Not necessarily.
Most nannies will empty a diaper genie and take the bag out to the trash, but the help doesn’t have to stop there. The reality is that someone in our household has to not only physically take the trash out, but also remember to do it, and that is a task that my partner and I happily assign to our nanny.
Nanny Duties: Feeding The Dog
Our dog is almost 9 years old, and we still call him a puppy. He was our firstborn after all! Typically, I am up first in the mornings because I like my morning ‘me time’, and I feed the dog as part of my routine. But on the weekends, when we pay a weekend nanny to help entertain the kids and keep them safe while we have the option to sleep in, we assign this task to her.
Some nights, our weekday nanny feeds the dog while we are sitting down to eat with the kids. It just depends on the cadence of the day. By the way, I love this “The Dog Was Fed” sign that you can flip back and forth between morning and evening. Genius. And it’s so helpful for when you have multiple people in your household who take on this task.
Nanny Duties: Sorting Through Mail & Packages
Our nanny brings mail and packages inside the house and sorts them for us. For the mail, she leaves it all on my desk because I prefer to review the bills and coordinate with our bookkeeper. That’s a trick my own mother taught me: You always want to be the one in charge of the checkbook so you can manage the cash flow. (Side note, we have two incredible bookkeeping recommendations through Proxy!)
For packages, I have her open all of them that are addressed to me because so many of our Amazon orders are for the kids, and there’s nothing she hasn’t seen after spending so much time together during the pandemic. But my partner prefers to open his packages himself, so she will place anything with his name on it on his desk.
Nanny Duties: Laundry
Doing the kids' laundry is a standard nanny duty, but I say, why stop there? When I spoke at the 2024 INNTD Conference about the value of a nanny who is willing to perform some of these low-joy tasks around the house, only one nanny raised her hand to say that handling a man's underwear would gross her out and would be outside the scope of her job. To that, I asked, but what if you were being paid $35 - $40/hour and not viewed as a nanny, but more of a family assistant? And she said, “Heck yeah, I’ll do whatever laundry you want!”
I share this because it’s super important to assign a value to these extra non-childcare-related nanny duties so that you can compensate your nanny accordingly, whether that be in the form of a bonus, raise, or other additional perk. For example, if you are paying your nanny $30/hour and she is willing to do all the laundry in the house, then increasing her rate of pay by even $1/hour is a no-brainer. That’s $2,080 to never think about or fold laundry again.
If laundry isn’t something your nanny is able to take on, we also have vetted dry cleaning and laundry services that pick up and drop off your clothes from your doorstep. Subscribe to Proxy to see the best laundry pick-up service where you live, that we’ve personally vetted, and receive preferred pricing as a subscriber.
The Benefits Of Extra Nanny Duties
Adding these 14 extra nanny duties can save you upwards of 5 hours each week. Those are 5 more hours you can use to spend time with your family, meet professional deadlines, or get some much-needed rest and relaxation. On top of the physical time saved, delegating these tasks will also help reduce your mental load, since you won’t have to spend time noticing and thinking about how you need to do these tasks. For more help building out your support system at home, subscribe to Proxy, the only vetted network of time-saving services. We are faster than Google, and more human than AI because we create a trusted support plan based on your needs.
