I’m with you about the guilt part (soooooo with you on that one), but I do have to acknowledge that my brother has a point. He’s constantly lecturing me about opportunity costs (or something like that)–he keeps reminding me that just because I know how to cook, clean, wash, sew, etc., doesn’t mean that I always have to do it personally, and further, that I need to weigh the little savings I would get by darning myself against the “cost” of what that time would be if I were to do something else (i.e. more “important” or productive in terms of my skills and profession). We academics are not used to thinking of our time in terms of billable hours, but, I am slowly coming to realize that he may be right in certain cases. Since we always have more to do than we have time, we cannot but pick and choose on what we will spend our time, and yes, our attention/energy. Perhaps those few extra dollars will be worth your having more time to spend on writing, or even just relaxing so that the creative juices or intellectual power can flow better after a break? And, definitely cheaper than buying new pants, plus, you won’t have to feel guilty about using extra resources and polluting the environment more, so, seems like a winning game, no? (I know, hard to get over that initial guilt–still working hard at that myself–but, once you get over that, you can get rid of two or three other kinds of guilt!)