If you have a spare room in your house, or a room you could turn into a spare room, or even a room in your garden that you could use, there are quite a few different ways in which that room could make you money.

The two main ways in which a spare room in your house could be used to make you money are:

rent it out to others; use it yourself

Rent your spare room out to others for their own use:

1)
Rent out your spare room as a temporary storage place for people needing to keep some of their furniture or belongings in inbetween moving house

2)
Rent your spare room out to people wishing to give lessons or hold classes but don’t have their own spare room to use

3)
Rent out your spare room to people who have products to sell, as a little shop, even a little art gallery. Perhaps your client or clients cannot see to the customers themselves and you can see to the customers yourself and take commission for what you sell for your clients.

4)
Rent out your spare room to people who need a meeting place – small business groups or clubs that don’t require a meeting place as large as a conference hall or other hall, or to different hobby or social clubs that need a weekly or monthly meeting place.

5)
Rent your spare room out to people needing a place to hold a small party, particularly for parties like kitchen teas and stork parties.

Making money from using the spare room yourself:

1)
Use the spare room as a little shop for yourself – neatly display whatever you are selling – your products could be art or photographs, picture frames, second hand books or other items you’ve been buying at auctions, pawn shops and second hand places, or from searching the for sale section of the local classifieds. Your products may be homemade crafts or edible goodies.

2)
Use the spare room to give classes. Be positive – you do know things other people don’t; you especially know things many children don’t know. Give kiddies craft classes, kiddies flower-arranging classes, kiddies cupcake icing classes.

3)
Use your spare room for merely supervising others: an after school homework class, or babysitting.

4)
Perform your service in your spare room: cut hair, cut or paint fingernails or toenails, give an exercise class, massage feet, sketch the person sitting in front of you, iron clothes and hang them up ready for collection.

5)
Use your spare room as a storage room for the products you’re renting or hiring out – theatre props, theatre or fancy dress costumes, dirtbins for special events, tablecloths and serving platters, bunting for cordoning off designated areas.

6)
Add a bed, microwave, fridge, kettle, and toaster and rent out the room to somebody who needs a place to live.

© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2012 and 2013