At your service

Once upon a time, say in the 1950s, doctors would make house calls and home milk delivery was standard practice. Those days may be long gone, but with modern overbooked schedules, we need at-home services more than ever. Luckily, there are some that you can still take advantage of—all you have to do is log on to a website or make a phone call.

Clothes call
Sure, lots of laundromats allow you to drop off your clothes, but Drive Cleaning(312-321-0033, www.drivecleaning.com) will come to you. In addition to offering free delivery, this three-and-a-half-year-old service also e-mails invoices and provides automatic monthly billing, so it’s easy to keep track of your orders. Its services include dry cleaning, laundering, ironing, and washing and folding. There’s a 15-pound minimum—about two weeks’ worth of clothes—and the dry-cleaning rates range from $5 to $10, while the wash-and-fold service is 95 cents a pound. The service area includes most of the city, from 95th Street on the South Side all the way up to Evanston.

A cut above the rest
Booking an at-home hair appointment means you’ll never again have to flip through tattered copies of People while waiting in a salon. Hair stylist David Scholle(312-543-2665) will come over and get down to business. Scholle, who studied at Vidal Sassoon, has been making house calls for about four years and will travel anywhere in the city. He arrives with every product you’ll ever need, and his rates start at $30 for cuts and $40 for color treatments.

Pet project
What do pet owners without cars do when it’s time for Fluffy to be groomed? There’s no need to try to find a cab that’ll allow pets when Spa Bark(312-850-2275, www.spabark.com) has a mobile grooming service. It’s essentially a pet salon on wheels, as the oversized van is equipped with a bathing area, vacuum and other essentials. Full grooms start at $65, and services include nail filing and buffing, aromatherapy massage, dematting, flea bathing and, uh, anal gland expression.

Rip it good
Changing a CD collection into a digital music library is a mind-numbingly long process, so why not outsource the tedium? RipIt Digital(773-600-4733, www.ripitdigital.com) will pick up your CDs ($10 to $20 for pickup and delivery charges) and convert them to digital MP3 files.The company charges varying rates for each disc that it converts, depending on quantity (50 to 200 CDs, for example, cost $1.40 each), and even has the technology to digitize your old cassettes and LPs. For $10 more, RipIt will load the files to your iPod, and all conversions include a DVD-archived copy of your music—because it’s always good to have a backup.

No paint, no gain
You’ve seen enough home-makeover shows on TV to know that painting is never as easy as it seems. The professionals at Paint the Town Red(773-398-7551, www.paint-the-town-red.com) will not only come over to get the job done, they’ll also serve as your personal designers. First, they’ll do an in-home color consulting session, and then it’s right to work on the next visit. Rates vary depending on wall quality (walls that require more prep and repair work will cost more), size and paint choice, but the first consulting visit is free. And while the pros get to work priming your walls, you’ll finally have a reason to leave the house.