LOS ANGELES - June Saruwatari is so organized that she has made a business of it. The owner of Organizing Maniac clocks 12- to 16-hour days helping other people eliminate clutter, set up filing systems and learn to manage their time. But even the tidier-than-thou have their limits.

Saruwatari didn't have time the other day to hang around home waiting for a repairman. So she summoned Gofer Girls, a Los Angeles company that does errands for $30 an hour.

The rich and famous long have understood the value of hiring people to handle their chores. They call them servants or, in Hollywood, personal assistants. But now regular people are doing the math and increasingly outsourcing life's tedious tasks.

Need help working through the honey-do list around the house? Rent a husband. For a small fee, he can rearrange the living room furniture or clean out the rain gutters. And you don't have to worry about fighting him for the remote.

Some people are so lacking in time or social skills that they can't find their own dates for a night on the town. A "female wingman" is ready to come to the rescue.

Long workdays and two-career couples have created a market for all sorts of service providers. The assistance business is becoming so common that Working Mother magazine's September issue printed a tip sheet for moms seeking professional errand help.

Lisa Ristorucci came up with the idea for Gofer Girls when she was an English literature major at UCLA. She worked summers in medical offices booking appointments, dealing with patients and picking up the doctors' dry cleaning.

Retrieving dry cleaning is one of Gofer Girls' most-requested services, along with shopping for groceries and picking up goods at department stores.

Susan George's Marina del Rey-based company, Pet Taxi, shuffles animals wherever their owners want them to go, including veterinarians' offices, dog parks or grooming salons.

Although she wouldn't disclose financial information, she said Pet Taxi had been more successful than she thought it would be when she bought it seven years ago.

John de Graaf, editor of a collection of essays titled "Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America," is disturbed by the upswing in such services.

"I don't think this is a good idea," said De Graaf, a Seattle television producer of the PBS specials "Running Out of Time" and "Affluenza." "We will be much better rounded and hap-pier people if we work less and grow some of our own food, cook some of our own food, learn to do things ourselves."

Kaile Warren believes that people these days don't have the "time, tools or talent" to do some things for themselves. In 1996, he founded Rent-A-Husband with those people in mind.

The South Portland, Maine-based company's selling point is that one of its employees - the "husband" - will be "the perfect part-time partner for those jobs that never get done" around the house. That includes simple jobs such as moving furniture or more labor-intensive tasks such as repairing a roof, at a cost of about $50 to $100 an hour. Warren said Rent-A-Husband's annual sales amounted to "several million dollars."

Michael Chau's plunge into the service industry two years ago began with a leisure-time observation. Whenever the San Francisco resident would hang out with the guys, they'd ask Chau to bring his wife, Sarah, who would talk to other women at bars and clubs and then introduce them to Chau's buddies.

Chau's innovation was to pair men with women who provide dating tips and, more important, introduce them to other women at bars, clubs and other social functions. Lady Wingmen operates in Los Angeles and eight other cities.

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