Charge for What a Family Trusts You With

Imagine a dog walker named Agnes Kittredge who also stays in clients’ houses with their pets when the families travel. She charges $28 for a 45-minute walk and $85 a night to stay over. That is about what walkers on the apps charge in her town. At those prices, she needs 16 families to make a living. So she carries 16 sets of keys and knows 16 alarm codes.

The Fairbrothers have used Agnes the longest. She walks Barley, their old Labrador, at noon every weekday. He takes a pill with his lunch, and the back gate latches only if you lift it.

In May, Mrs. Fairbrother asks Agnes to stay with Barley for three weeks in July, while the family is in Maine. Two other families have already booked Agnes for stays in July. With 16 families, her summer is full by spring. “I’m so sorry, July’s full,” she writes back.

Mrs. Fairbrother books a house sitter through an agency, at $160 a night. The sitter also walks Barley, and she offers to keep walking him after the family gets home. In August, Mrs. Fairbrother writes to Agnes. “Thank you for everything. The sitter is going to carry on with Barley. We’d rather only one person had our keys.” Agnes takes the Fairbrothers’ key off her ring.

Suppose instead that Agnes charges for what the families trust her with. In January, she writes to each family with her terms from April. “From April, I’m working for fewer families, so I can be the one who comes to each house every time,” she writes to Mrs. Fairbrother. “Barley’s weekday walks will be $850 a month, and stays will be $175 a night. Your keys and your alarm code stay with me. If I’m ever ill, my friend Clem walks him, and I’ll bring her to meet you both first.”

Mrs. Fairbrother writes back that it is fine. Seven families find someone cheaper, and by April Agnes has nine.

In May, Mrs. Fairbrother asks about July. With nine families, Agnes has room, and she stays with Barley for the three weeks. He gets his pill with his lunch every day, and the back gate stays shut. In the autumn, Agnes is still the only person outside the family with a key to the house.

The walks were the same in both versions. In the first, Agnes took her price from what a stranger on an app charges for 45 minutes. At that price, she needed 16 families, and 16 families fill July. Mrs. Fairbrother then paid a stranger $160 a night, nearly twice Agnes’s price. After that, she wanted fewer people with her keys.

In the second version, Agnes’s price paid for being the one person with the Fairbrothers’ keys. So she could afford to keep fewer families, and she had room in the month that mattered to this family.

So set your price from what a family trusts you with. Keep only as many families as you can see to yourself. Here is why the going rate undercharges for work inside a home. Then you will hear from an organizer’s client, two organizers, and two pet sitters.

The going rate pays for the minutes, and the family is paying for a person

Here is the course’s view of where the going rate comes from. On the apps, a family can book whoever is free that day, and the price pays for 45 minutes with a dog. Many dog walkers and pet sitters set their prices near it, because it is the price they can see.

A family that keeps one walker for years is buying something else. It is buying one person with its keys and its alarm code. That person knows the old dog’s pills and the gate that sticks. The same person comes on every visit, including the weeks the family is away. An app cannot promise that, because the person from an app can change from one week to the next. When that person is ill, the next best choice is a stand-in the family has already met. Then nobody new walks into the house.

A price at the going rate leaves that part out. It also decides how many families you need. At $28 a walk, a walker needs a long list to make a living. Each family on the list is another set of keys and another family that wants the same weeks in July. Turning up as promised on every visit is what a family expects as a minimum. A long list makes even that hard to keep.

Fewer clients at a higher fee can earn the same money. For a walker, they also leave room for the weeks a family cares about most.

The price tells the family something too, before it has seen much of your work. That is how price creates belief. A price at the going rate tells the family that you are one more walker from the app.

For regular work, such as weekday walks or weekly cleaning, the course already suggests selling it by the month. A price for each walk asks the family to weigh each walk. A fee for the month pays for the family’s place on your list.

A client said she would have paid her organizer more

In January 2022, Marni Jameson’s “At Home” column in the Denver Gazette followed one family’s organizer over 15 years. Jennifer McCarthy of Lake Oswego, Oregon, first hired Danielle Tanner Liu, a certified professional organizer, for her husband’s home office. Over three moves, the column says, Liu made almost every area of the family’s home work better.

By McCarthy’s own estimate, she paid Liu a few thousand dollars over those years. “I would have paid more. It’s been so worth it,” she said.

Measured against this lesson, McCarthy trusted Liu with almost every room in the house, through three moves. She thought that was worth more than she paid. What a family thinks the access is worth can be more than the professional charges for it.

An organizer bills by the hour for work she compares to therapy

Julia Raz runs Golden West Organizing in Los Angeles, and she also teaches college classes in communication. In August 2022, a profile on the Acorns website described how she charges. She started by organizing homes for free, in exchange for testimonials and before-and-after photos. Now clients pay by the hour. It is $150 an hour for two organizers from her team, or $250 an hour for Raz and another organizer.

Raz says much of the work is not about the belongings. “In a lot of ways, it’s very similar to therapy,” she said. Some clients are letting go of things that belonged to someone who died. With one client, she spent five to six hours going through a shoebox of photos of the client’s late parents. “I’ve had a client tell me that I saved their marriage,” she said.

She has raised her hourly rate steadily, and she will have to raise it again. It has not come easily. “It’s a combination of my experience as an educator and being a woman,” she said. “Both of those two things together have made me kind of fearful of saying like ‘Oh, this is what I charge.’ Even though I can.”

Measured against this lesson, Raz’s bill counts hours. Five hours with a box of a parent’s photos costs the client the same as five hours in a garage. So the hours leave out what clients said the work did for them. The price for that part of the work has to come from something other than the clock.

A Denver organizer’s client canceled closets worth nearly $60,000

Keli Jakel runs Organized by Keli & Co., which manages moves and organizes homes in Denver. In an interview posted on her company’s blog, she described one job. A client she was unpacking in a new home had planned to have custom closets installed. Midway through the work, “they canceled the installation and saved nearly $60,000,” she said. They were so pleased with what her team did with the closets they already had.

Some clients also keep her firm coming back. “Some clients have us on retainer to return weekly/monthly for maintenance or decluttering sessions,” she said.

While the interview gives no fee beside it, the $60,000 is what that job was worth to the family. The clients on retainer pay for her firm to come back into the house week after week, or month after month. So when you set your price, look at what your work spares a family and how often the family lets you in.

Two pet sitters say a higher price has to come with a different service

Collin Funkhouser and Meghan host Pet Sitter Confessional, a podcast about life as a pet sitter. Collin describes theirs as a dog walking business. In June 2022, with gas and everything else costing more, they talked about raising their prices.

Collin named the risk. In his words, “there’s only so high that prices can go before people start to push back and look for alternatives.” He also floated short-term discounts to grow a client list before hard times.

They suggested going upmarket instead of only raising prices. “You don’t just do dog walks, you do adventure walks,” Meghan said. When people decide to go premium, Collin said, “they just think of raising your prices. And this is not it.” Meghan said it matters in their trade “because we are in their home, and we’re meeting them and getting to know their pet and them. And it’s very personal.”

Measured against this lesson, the families who push back are the ones weighing the walk against a cheaper walk. A discount brings in more of them, which is the opposite of this lesson’s move. The price in this lesson comes with a different service, as Collin and Meghan say it should. There are fewer families, you come on every visit, and the keys stay with you. Some families will still look for alternatives, as seven of Agnes’s did.

Why charging for the keys as an extra goes wrong

Imagine a pet sitter named Lorna Lansdowne who visits cats twice a day while their families travel. She keeps the keys for 20 families between trips, and she knows that she charges too little. So in January, instead of raising her price for a visit, she adds a line to her invoices. “Key holding, $15 a month.”

Mrs. Pascoe travels four times a year, and her two cats, Saffron and Fig, are among Lorna’s favorites. Mrs. Pascoe replies the same day. “We only go away a few times a year. Could we skip the key fee? We’ll leave a key in a lockbox by the back door.” Lorna does not want to lose her, so she agrees. Three more families ask for the same, and Lorna agrees each time. Now four houses have a key in a lockbox, and Lorna’s price is what it was.

Lorna was right that her price was too low. Her mistake was charging for the keys as an extra. A charge on its own line asks the family to weigh that one part. Mrs. Pascoe found a cheaper way to do without it. A key that stays in Lorna’s hands is the part of her work a stranger could not give. It became the part Mrs. Pascoe saved $15 on.

The version that works puts the keys inside the price. Lorna raises each visit from $28 to $32 and writes to her families once. “From May, visits are $32. Your keys stay with me between trips, and only I come to the house.” Mrs. Pascoe books her for the summer.

Charging for the keys is not charging for being honest

Many people who work in homes feel that trust should come free. Charging for it can sound like charging a family extra for not stealing. Plenty of people also think dog walking is easy and should be cheap, and many walkers price as if they agree.

The price does not pay for honesty. Every family is owed that. The price pays for what it takes to be the one person with a family’s keys. That means fewer families, room in July, and you on every visit. Agnes’s families paid for that, and the families who did not want it found someone cheaper.

Raz said she was fearful of saying her price, “Even though I can.” McCarthy said she would have paid more. Mrs. Fairbrother paid an agency $160 a night for a stranger. A family that trusts you with its house may already think the access is worth more than you charge.

How to price what a family trusts you with

1. For each family, write down what it hands you besides your time. Include the keys, the alarm code, the pets, the house while the family is away, and the calls when something goes wrong. Your price covers all of it. For example, a housekeeper might write that the Ashtons give her the house key and the alarm code. She has the house to herself on Thursdays, and she lets in the plumber.
2. Decide how many families you can see to yourself, on every visit and in your busiest weeks. Then hold at that number. That is the course’s suggestion, because a family you cannot see to yourself gets a stranger with its keys. For example, a dog walker might hold at nine families.
3. Choose one person to cover when you are ill, and take them to meet each family before they are needed. For example, a pet sitter can say, “This is Marta. If I’m ever ill, she’ll come, and now the cats know her.”
4. Set your price from that number of families, not from the going rate. Work out what your month needs to earn, and divide it among the families you will keep. Then check that the price sits inside the range the families you want already pay. An agency’s rate for a house sitter is one guide. For example, a housekeeper who needs $6,000 a month from five families might charge $1,200 a month for two mornings a week.
5. Put the keys, the codes, and the messages inside that price, with no fee for any of them. For example, a house manager’s terms can say, “The monthly fee covers your keys, the alarm, and letting in anyone who works on the house.”
6. When you give a family your price, say first what it gets from you, as facts about your work. Then give the price once and stop. Leave out what a stranger might do in the house, because naming the family’s worry tells it that you saw it. For example, an organizer who comes once a month can say, “I’m the only one who works in your house, and your keys stay with me. It’s $1,200 a month for one day a month.”
7. Give new families the new price first, from a date you choose. Tell current families the same week, with a date at least three months away, as when you raise your price in stages. For example, a dog walker can write, “From June 1, weekday walks are $800 a month. Until then, nothing changes.”

Next: You will see how to learn who decides what in a household, from the staff to the daily routines.