Have you ever had a lodger in your house? Was it a mistake or good.

We only had one lodger a French student who stayed for a week. He told us that his father was a pickpocket in Paris. After he had left we found out our children's money boxes had been emptied. Never again.

We have never had lodgers, only exchange students, which was OK ish, but some of them do come with 'baggage'. We took a young Frennch lad one year, as a favour, as his accommodation had fallen through. We told the people in charge of the group that he could only stay for a limited time, as we were due to go on holiday. Nobody had told the youngster this, and he was distraught. I felt dreadful and never did it again. My parents had a lovely lodger for several years, until he married. He was an air steward and used to tell Mum that when flying back into Heathrow, he could spot our house as it was painted white. Like several other Gn's I couldn't share my home now, too set in our ways.

I had foreign students when my children were small. Most of them were really good to have in the house and I learnt a lot about other countries and made quite good money.
More recently I had a lodger, a friend of a friend, who stayed a couple of years but he was quite unpleasant. He did pay his rent on time but did argue with me, interfere when I was cooking and not keep his room clean. In the end I gave him notice. I'd never have another lodger.

I had foreign students when my children were small. Most of them were really good to have in the house and I learnt a lot about other countries and made quite good money.
More recently I had a lodger, a friend of a friend, who stayed a couple of years but he was quite unpleasant. He did pay his rent on time but did argue with me, interfere when I was cooking and not keep his room clean. In the end I gave him notice. I'd never have another lodger.

I had foreign students when my children were small. Most of them were really good to have in the house and I learnt a lot about other countries and made quite good money.
More recently I had a lodger, a friend of a friend, who stayed a couple of years but he was quite unpleasant. He did pay his rent on time but did argue with me, interfere when I was cooking and not keep his room clean. In the end I gave him notice. I'd never have another lodger.

My aunt had a lodger, a conniving old man, very manipulative. My dad was supposed to inherit the house when she died, she had told him this as he was her only living relative. He did everything for her, taking her out etc even before she told him about the house, he was very fond of her. Enter the lodger who sucked up to her and deliberately pushed my dad out of the way when he wanted to help. When she became ill, he took over completely and made himself indisposable. When she died, we found that he had persuaded her to change her will so he got the house. He sold off all her goods, jewellery, furniture etc and lived in one room. When he became ill, he left the house to some woman he met in the hospital who looked after him. I think she knew what she was doing as he was always bragging that he had a lovely big house in Bournville, Birmingham. It was on the market not long ago for £270.000.

Yep I also had actors, ballet companies, stage crew from local theatre - all brilliant except in those days they tended to all smoke and i worried about them setting us all on fire -so they smoked out of the windows !!!!

We had a young Japanese girl stay with us when her original place to stay broke down .We originally met her whilst we were staying in st Ives on holiday .She was visiting the area to visit a famous potter museum ( I've forgotten who it is!) Apparently she was then going on to stay with a lad she met in Japan whilst he was on holiday . But when she arrived she discovered he had another girl living with him and distraught, contacted us . She turned out to be quite a difficult lodger ,wanting to prepare her own food in our small kitchen at the same time as I was trying to prepare ours ,she didn't want to eat our food .Being Japanese, she showered and then filled the bath to the brim every day leaving us with no hot water. The plan was that she was to use our house as a base whilst she travelled around various parts of the UK and Europe , but that never really happened much . I felt a bit sorry for her as I think her plan was to come to the UK and marry this chap she had met . But the three months she stayed with us made us realise we would not do it again !

Apologies that my post was duplicated - I don't know what happened.

We've had lots of lodgers over the years, most of them good ones. The best one of all was a young Taiwanese Buddhist who was attending his last year at uni. He was lovely and we learned a lot about Buddhism from him. He bought and cooked his own food, and his room was the tidiest one in the house. He was enchanted one day to discover a light sprinkling of snow on the ground - "Ah! Snow! Plenty snow!" He and his friend, who was lodging nearby, had Christmas dinner with us. They had never experienced an English Christmas before, so we had 'turkey and all the trimmings'. In exchange, they, plus a Tai girl friend, took over my kitchen in January and prepared a feast enough to feed the entire street as they celebrated the Chinese New Year with us.
When his uni course was finished and it was time for him to return home we really missed him. We stayed in touch for a while, but, of course, his life and ours moved on. I will never forget him though, he brought so much into our lives. My children still remember him too.

narrowboatnan I took in a 15 year old language student from Taiwan - he was supposed to stay with me for a week while the homestay family he was living with had a holiday, but he refused to go back to them so he stayed with us for the rest of his time in the UK and eventually I became his legal guardian; he finally returned to live in Taiwan eleven years later. Even though he comes home to visit me as often as he can I still miss him very much.
I've never been without some sort of lodger for thirty plus years and I've never had any real problems to speak of. In the last 18 months we've had people from Korea, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, France, Iraq, Vietnam and England staying here. I have no internal door locks and, as far as I'm aware, I've never had anything stolen.

We have had friends of our children from abroad lodge with us for several weeks -several months whilst they studied/worked in London. These included an ex French monk who had had second thoughts re the monastic life. We acquired him through our youngest DD who lodged with the monk's mother in France where she was studying and, having heard of the young monk's crisis of conscience, suggested he come to live with us and improve his English. He stayed for a year, then returned at intervals. We also had a young Australian couple for nine months-- it was meant to be for a couple of weeks but they could not find shared accommodation in London that accepted a couple. We now call them our Australian children. Enter soon afterwards a series of young Italians. We have never asked for rent but most of our past lodgers have
become life-long friends and we are constantly invited to their family events abroad.

This is all lovely but there is a downside: now that the reputation for our "open house" is established, we are constantly being asked if we can have someone's child/ grandchild/ daughter/son/cousin/ cousin of a cousin, and recently the child of a French friend's neighbour's sister-in-law! Having to resort to restraining the hospitality as we get older( and busier) now that all our children are settled elsewhere. Difficult to say no due to all the past "visitors!"

I had lodgers for several years while children young and I couldn't get out to work. In summer I did B and B.
The only prob I had was one young man who had awful b. O. I left toiletries in his room but he was so bad my parents didn't want to visit as house smelled, so he had to go!