Our fall favorites are here! 🍂

Dear Client H., 

I’ve enjoyed working with you on the Marriage, Children, and Home Life Management Project (or, MCHLMP) and I am delighted that you’ve chosen to keep me on your team as we go into the next year! 

I wanted to let you know that I am increasing my rates, effective two weeks from today which coincides with the last day of my full-time job outside of the full-time and-then-some job I do as part of the MCHLMP. However, this means that I wanted to give you the first two weeks of your new package at the current rate, as a thank you for being such an amazing client. This rate increase will be in keeping with the average local Cost-of-Living index, and will be according to the specific demographics of our particular MCHLMP. 

The market value of, and the rate other clients are willing to pay for the quality of services that I provide as Wife, Mother, and Home Manager of the MCHLMP far exceeds my current rate, which is zero dollars. 

Our informal agreement has, to date, included my actually paying for the putting of the children into daycare to work an additional, full-time, quite-a-bit-less-than-meaningful job—only to also cook a variety of foods in interesting ways, clean the nether-reaches of our home occasionally, write and send thank-yous, make the Christmas Magic, and ensure that the laundry isn’t molding in the dryer and that it sometimes gets folded—to name just a few of my additional responsibilities that are often executed long after you have gone to bed. This new increase will help focus my efforts on the MCHLMP, will ensure that I am not only able to keep offering the same level of service that I have been providing, but it will allow me to perform at a much higher and at a more than semi-conscious level! Thus, producing a much better Home and Life Product, that I think you will be thrilled with. 

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I will continue to provide you with the 24-hour, round-the-clock coverage of troublesome and costly issues to daytime performance that you have come to expect, such as: feeding our youngest child day and night using my body, which we mutually agreed offers optimal nutrition to our final product. Or, responding to the full scope of after-hours emergency calls that come in periodically throughout almost every night, from blankets needing to be repositioned to sudden onslaughts of vomit. While the resolution of these tasks have always been auto-delegated to me because of my title of “Mom”, our organizational roles will reflect more transparency and common-sense-rooted Best Practices, since I will no longer be also having to go to my additional full-time work outside of the MCHLMP, first thing almost every following morning. 

It has come to my attention that you may have scaled down operations in other segments of your company, to redistribute your time and your workforce resources to the unanticipated taskload of the MCHLMP, despite (or maybe because of) having never been fully equipped to manage the nature and scale of MCHLMP, and lacking the training and efficiencies that are a built-in part of my comprehensive suite of services. As part of my ongoing commitment to monitoring the needs of my clients, it is my hope that you will recognize and use my ongoing, exceptionally high-quality services that have already yielded a positive ROI (Return On Investment), to bring your other company operations back up to full-time, thus ensuring a successful partnership for years to come. 

Best, 
Mom 
Freelance Wife and Home Manager, since 2002 
Food Network, Family Circle, & Pinterest Certified

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Carisa Peterson

Carisa Peterson is a mother of two, a worker bee, and a published writer and produced playwright who writes in the wee hours from her home in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Her creative work can be seen on McSweeney’s, The Wisdom Daily, Her View From Home, The Refresh, Real Mom Daily, Elephant Journal, and in the successful 4-week run of Curves Ahead at Breckenridge, Colorado’s Backstage Theatre (2015). She enjoys doodling topiary trees in her spare time. Follow Carisa @LynnoType, see her on Facebook, or visit www.carisapeterson.com.

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