Should you provide meals for your lodgers?

This is entirely up to you.  Let’s take a look of the pro’s and cons.

The good points about providing meals:

• you can charge extra for them, which will increase your profits from lodgering
• if you have a family or partner who you cook for anyway, it will not be much extra work
• if you enjoy cooking it is nice to have someone else appreciate your food
• you can get to know your lodger better while chatting over the dinner table,
• if you don’t like people messing about in your kitchen you can justifiably ask them not to use it (although if you don’t want lodgers to use the kitchen, this must be made crystal clear to them before they sign up)

The bad points are that:

• it can be a lot of bother particularly if you don’t like cooking much or are not very good at it
• you may prefer not to become too friendly with your lodger

When took in lodgers, when I had long term lodgers they did their own cooking but when I had short term students staying would often cook for them.  It can be a good source of extra income. 

If you decide to do meals, make sure you have some decent cookbooks for inspiration for the inevitable days when you can’t think of what to do (Delia’s Smiths Complete How to Cook is highly recommended, as is The 30-Minute Cook by Nigel Slater)

Lodgers breakfast

Whether or not you provide a cooked dinner, it is always a good idea to provide breakfast as it is so easy – provided they don’t want a cooked breakfast (which is something best avoided).

You can just lay the table the night before and allow them to help themselves in the morning.

You should provide as a minimum:

• fruit juice
• tea, coffee and sugar laid out near the electric kettle (include some herb teas)
• sliced bread, and a toaster so they can make toast if they want
• butter, marmalade and a selection of jams and honey
• a selection of cereal (those variety packs are good until you learn what they like) and a jug of milk
• fresh fruit

Other things you could include are

• yoghurts
• tinned grapefruit
• dried fruit such as apricots and prunes
• muesli
• cheese and/or cold sliced cold meat such as ham
• croissants

Lay the table nicely (perhaps with a cheerful tablecloth – a PVC one will cut down on washing), and perhaps some flowers in a vase, so it is welcoming when they come down in the morning – and they will be as happy as Larry.

Make sure though that the cost of all this is included in your lodger’s rent.