I’m planning to change my home office in to a guest room. My idea is that having a guest room will attract wanted guests ( friends), interesting and friendly guests ( thru couchsurfing); maybe even some paying guests ( throught AirBnB). One of the joys in my life is entertaining guests, and I feel that a guest room should make that an easier possibility.
The guest room shares the kitchen and bathroom with me, so i’d give up some privacy if the guest room would see a lot of use.
So, my question is directed at Dopers with a guest room. How much use do you get out of your guest room? Does it attract the right kind of guest? How do you keep unwanted guests out? Is it hard to keep your own clutter out of the guest room? Do you make any moneu out of your guest room? Do you find you enjoy being a host more or less then you thought?
My guest room was also our home office. We had issues keeping the clutter out. Now it houses my brother, he moved in with us years ago so no guest room and honestly he has out-stayed his welcome but I can’t bring myself to throw him out.
My job situation is changing and I might end up moving in less than a year, my brother is well aware of the fact that he won’t be moving with us. Short of that, I think we’re stuck with him for the long haul. (yes, I’m a wuss)
Our guest room has now become MY bedroom! I couldn’t take my husbands snoring anymore. Towards the end of our SLEEPING in the same bed, he’d keep waking up because he was worried he was snoring and keeping me up! So now I have my own little Shangri-la. I love it and would never give it up. I can read or watch Netflix to my heart’s content AND I can have my window open all the time. We both sleep so much better. I highly recommend it.
I live alone in a 3-bedroom house. One bedroom is my office (I work from home) and the other is a legit guest room.
I’ve used the guest room for guests maybe a dozen times in the dozen years I’ve lived here. Never for surprise guests…well, a couple times for friends who drank too much here.
I do use the room for storage. I sell my friends’ used kid stuff (clothes, toys) on a local Facebook site. So the walls are lined with shelves full of boxes of kids clothes. I keep the bed cleared off and the dresser empty so it’s always ready to receive guests.
I do have a basement, a garage and a shed so I really don’t need to store random junk in there. It’s all organized junk
I don’t think I could ever have a non-friend guest stay in that room. It’s right next to my room!
I’ve had other people living here before - they lived in the basement. I still had to share a bathroom and kitchen with them but otherwise I kind of never saw them.
In fact the last time I had a guest over - my business partner, who regularly visits from out of state and stays in the guest room - I decided the guest room was too busy and he’d be much more comfortable in the basement on the couch. It worked out well.
I rarely have guests, but I do have a guest room. There is some clutter in there, but with a bit of tidying and dusting, it would be fine for someone to stay. It’s tiny, as are all the bedrooms in my house, so there is an old futon bed that folds into a couch so it doesn’t take up the whole room when it’s not being used as a bed. Also, comfortable for a night or two, but not a mattress you’d want to sleep on long term.
Mostly though, we refer to it as the Princess suite, because my girl dog has claimed it as hers (she is a princess), and likes to spend time in there napping on the couch.
I don’t suppose we consider them “guest rooms” so much as “extra rooms”. They were bedrooms for the 2 kids that have moved out. We never have overnight guests and the rooms just seem to accumulate stuff that really doesn’t go anywhere else.
Having guest rooms made it possible, just this year, for my brother’s family to spend a weekend and for a Doper and a guy from Mensa’s SIGHT program to spend a week there each. So I get more guests, and they’re welcome.
Mind you: the regime is fondal sopapo, “here’s the keys, there’s the bathroom, there’s the kitchen; there’s a ton of supermarkets in the area, there’s the subway.” Anybody wanting five-star service can go pay for it.
I don’t try to keep clutter out of the guest rooms. There is always one room that’s the Designated Clutter Room; if it’s needed, it gets decluttered. But the clutter can be things such as suitcases that can go over the closet and which I’m not putting on it because I’m using them a lot: if the room is needed, up they go. It’s never things for which I don’t otherwise have space, but things which are more convenient to have out of place.
I make money out of the spare room by using it as an office. My wife uses the other spare room as her office, but actually it’s become her closet. When our addition is done we’ll have a new bedroom, our old bedroom will become a spare room, and somehow one of the spare rooms will become a guest room.
I use my library as the spare room when we have guests. It doesn’t really get cluttered with other people’s stuff.
I expect that I will get a few more visitors now that I have it all set up with curtains on the doors (they are glass), and a nice guest bed when needed.
Our spare room is set up as our library. The sofa folds out into a double bed, so that is where guests stay. It does get cluttered from time to time, as the chair in there ends up as a receptacle for stuff that doesn’t yet have a home.
We have 2 extra bedrooms. One is more or less made up as a guest room, but the closet and the dresser in there are used for overflow storage. The other can be used as a guest room if I clear the crap off the futon, but it’s mostly a repository for my yarn and other craft stuff, as well as miscellaneous books, clothes and other things.
Our daughter and SIL will be visiting for Thanksgiving, and we’ll have a house sitter staying in October, so the guest room will be used this autumn. My husband’s parents talked about coming to visit, but neither of them is in good enough health for the 800 mile drive, and they don’t like to fly, so I doubt they’ll ever visit us again.
No way we’d rent out any space in our house to strangers.
I hope my room will follow Nava’s example. I feel my world gets bigger when I can have international guests over. And I like the "DIY"system of guest care.
I have a dear friend who never comes to my house because she is seriously allergic to paper dust and cat hair. One of the cool things about the guest room is I can put a spring on the door holding it shut, so the cat doesn’t go in there.
It’s also a reassuring idea I have a place for my 85-year old dad to go if he needs it for a few days.
Well, so far the biggest lessons learnt is that:
a guest room is nothing without active invitations, and
I wavered between more wanted guests and no difference. For the most part, it means the same number of guests, it’s just much more pleasant for us and them to have a room instead of the couch. But I’m sure there are a few people who are more willing to visit knowing they have a place to sleep, so I went with more wanted.
Same here - except roles reversed - my wife is the snorer. She also likes to stay up late with the light on, reading. The guest room is darker, cooler, and quieter than the master, and thus creates excellent sleep hygiene for me. Before I did this I was awake most of the night, irritable, and stressed - sort of like when there is a baby in the house. It also has the benefit, as you say, to keep the window open most of the time, so I can hear night breezes, and I can look up from my pillow and fall asleep to the stars most nights. It will be hard to go back if we ever do have guests stay over.
TRC4941, I don’t know if you have had any issues explaining to people why you and your spouse do this? I have - maybe a topic for another thread, but it seems outside the norm and is hard to explain to people, so I don’t advertise it much. My teen-age kids were a bit shocked and concerned at first, but they got used to it.
I suppose our guest room should be the second bedroom upstairs. It was last occupied my boyfriend’s wife, who had fallen ill and eventually passed away. It holds her bedframe, still set up, and her clothes are still in the closet, but over the years it has become a catch-all for various stuff. My boyfriend likes to do his ironing in there. Otherwise, it doesn’t see any use.
The true guest room is what should be the formal dining room here, though there’s no table in in it. My boyfriend already had a bed there for when an elderly friend or one of his brothers visited. When I moved in at the beginning of this year, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend every night with my boyfriend, so we thought the dining/guest room would become my bedroom. I put my bed in there and we gave away his. Though his was in better shape, I was comfortable with mine.
It turned out I sleep every night with my boyfriend after all. Except for a period several weeks ago when I’d injured my knee. I’m glad we had a bed downstairs as the only bathroom is downstairs as well. Negotiating those stairs a few times a night would not have been fun.
My extra bedroom is used for storage, mostly for my home-based business, and I also keep a second litterbox there, situated in such a way that the litter can’t contaminate anything else in the room.
