Advice on lodger

[Dollygirl2008]

Hi, I have a lodger coming in a couple of weeks time on a Monday to Friday basis. I'm new to this as I've only had international students, so I'm unsure of a few things.

I'm going to give her cupboard, fridge and freezer space and assume she will use all of my kitchen equipment, cutlery, pans etc. However, I'm unsure of what I should suggest with regards to washing - do people normally limit the amount of times they can use the washing machine a week? Again, I'm assuming she'll need to bring her own washing powder as she may not favour what we use. And cleaning/changing bed laundry? How would you advise on managing that?

And heating - she's at Uni and I'm in full time work so I'm hoping not to be putting the heating on during the day - any advice?

I'm pretty relaxed but I just don't want to come across as unreasonable!

Any info from others experience would be great, thanks

Thanks serbska - that's a really helpful post!

Ha, that's exactly what one of my lodgers did with her washing.. I forgot until it was mentioned. She seemed quite shocked that pants could be washed with other clothes :)

Thank you for all your advice. Can I ask another question (as you can tell, I'm new to this!). What do you advise about Christmas vacation and Summer vacation? Do you ask them to just carry on paying the monthly rent and they can come and go if they please (she's likely to go home over both holidays).

Thanks

When I was a student I rented a room in a shared house and we paid half rent to keep the room. I’ve never been a lodger and none of the houses I lived in had washing machines. We also split the gas and electricity bills.

The half rent was for the summer, Christmas was full tent

A limit on the washing machine to once a week is not a good idea. bedlinen has to be washed and separate washes for coloured things.
The rent you get will depend what other people are charging and also what they are offering. Watch out for the heating possibly being on at night. Some students do not get up till 10 am and study during the night till 1 or 2 am!

Hi
This is an interesting thread. I'm considering lodging for a period whilst I move to a new job. I've never lodged before, so have no idea what is reasonable etc. I assumed I'd be almost confined to the bedroom and be "in the way" whenever I emerged! but reading this it seems as though it's quite reasonable to treat it as your own home?

@Tyke2 depends on the set up, sometimes you can sometimes you can’t. Make sure you ask lots of questions if the potential host isn’t being very clear about expectations.

One of the draws of M-F lodgers is that they don’t treat it like their own home eg they socialise out after work or back home at the weekends rather than having friends round to the M-F place.

Thought I'd update! It's been 2 months now and I think it's going incredibly well! I realise now that each person is individual, and so each arrangement will be. She's quite young, so actually, she asked me if I could do her washing. Absolutely fine by me as there;s only myself and my daughter, so we tend to just chuck it all in together (after separating etc) and I've ended up doing her ironing, but there is literally hardly any which makes it a reasonable request in my eyes. She is at college and also has an evening job so I rarely see her. She tends to stay in her room and spends lots of time on her laptop, either watching TV, skyping friends or studying.

I've made it known that she's welcome to join us in the living room, but she likes to keep herself to herself and so far it just "works". I've had a review and she seems happy too. She very often leaves her washing up, but to be honest, it doesn't bother me clearing up after her as she's so great in all other ways.

Tyke2 - again, I think you need to gauge the person you'd be living with as to what they expect and also what you want