DULY WARNED “This isn’t the type of job that I’d recommend to women who maintain perfect manicures.”

W

hen Elana Schachter’s children were young she turned to a pretty atypical career for a frum mother. “I painted homes for three years. I had gotten divorced and for the first time in many years I needed to earn an income to support myself and contribute to expenses for the kids. When a friend told me that another acquaintance was looking for a partner in her painting business it sounded perfect.” The position worked out very well for Elana; she was able to bring in a solid income and work somewhat flexible hours doing something that she quickly discovered she enjoyed.

Tammy the senior partner of the company and Elana got along very well from the start and their clients appreciated their work. Women have a sense of color detail and aesthetics that men often do not have and unlike their male competitors Tammy and Elana left the home clean after a job not littered with beer cans and cigarette butts.

Elana enjoyed getting to meet the very nice families in the neighborhood who employed her. Sometimes the homeowners wanted to participate in the work; then Elana and Tammy would train them and the job would end up going faster and costing less. “In the process of painting a house the mess gets worse before it gets better” says Elana “and the prep work always took much longer than the painting. On each job there would come a point when Tammy would say ‘We have to get this job done and get out of here! Time’s a-wasting!’ I knew that was the day we were turning the corner.”

Elana who freely admits to being a bit of a perfectionist took pride in her painting. “I enjoyed getting the walls perfectly smooth covered with a perfectly even layer of colorful paint.” The finiteness of the job was another appealing aspect. “I liked doing a job that had a clear beginning middle and end and the end was clearly a vast improvement over the beginning.” This was particularly meaningful to Elana who was struggling in other areas of life; completing a job and getting positive feedback from clients helped restore her sense of self-worth.

This period in Elana’s life was very difficult for her emotionally. “Sometimes as I painted the walls of other people’s homes I mourned the destruction of my own” Elana recalls. “Tammy was very understanding and supportive; if she caught me crying she would lovingly chide me not to water down the paint too much with my tears.”