Great ideas that bring in a small amount of income for me include:

Buy items at yard sales to sell on craigslist. The best advice I ever read about this one is to buy what you personally know is an awesome deal. For me that means kid stuff (I have no knowledge of antiques, baseball cards, etc.) If I can snag a double stroller at a yard sale for ten bucks, chances are I could sell it from craigslist for double that. BOOM ten bucks income for the time to write a craigslist post and snap a few pictures. I don’t like selling things on ebay because it requires me to drive to the post office with my kiddos to mail it in a timely manner, so it’s not worth it to me. Another thing I have knowledge about is lawn mowers. If I see a good lawn mower at a yard sale that looks like an easy fix I may fix it, and sell it on craigslist. What do YOU know the value of, that you could buy and sell?

Watch other kids in your home! It’s illegal to be a full time caregiver without proper licensing, etc. but babysitting does not require a license. This means you can advertise on craigslist about being a last-minute, back-up, emergency, or random hours babysitter. The law states that you need to be licensed to be the caregiver if you are on a set schedule, but if you are a back-up that is not the case and it’s nice to make some extra money without having to commit to doing it every day all day. If someone sees my craigslist ad and calls, I can say absolutely if I have no time commitments and my kids are healthy. I say I am not available if my kids have sport stuff, doctor appointments, etc.. I really wish someone had told me this option a long time ago!

One possibility is cleaning houses on your own schedule. I haven’t personally tried this yet but it would probably work best in the summer. This is because I can get one of the young women in my community to watch my children for 5-6.00/hr while I go make 10-20/hr doing an awesome organization or cleaning job for somebody else. I will update this with my success or failure!

You can also clean offices at night. This allows my husband to watch the kids instead of a daycare. Cleaning offices has by far been the most income per hour that I have done. I started cleaning my husband’s small place of work on the weekend for a few hours and now clean a little bit larger office three evenings a week. I worked for a cleaning company going every weeknight for three hours a night and it was too much for me to do long term. I was able to stick it out through an entire pregnancy up until one week before my 5th was born. I just thought of him as my little work partner 🙂

Recycle aluminum. I remember doing this growing up and my kids used to pick up cans from our apartment parking lot to recycle before we moved to our house. Unfortunately (or not) for us, we don’t drink soda too often and hardly get any cans to recycle for money to make it worth the drive-but maybe this would be a good idea for your situation! Just google a recycle place near you and see if they pay money for certain items.

Yard/bake sale. I regularly declutter and dejunk my house so all the stuff I decide is not worth the space in our house gets put in the yard sale pile/shelf in our garage. I read a great article a few months ago that talked about making the most out of your yard sale through doing a bake sale at the same time. Growing up I usually made big rice krispy treats and sold out at 50 cents each. Make sure your signs are simple and easy to follow. Some people around here set them up the night before so they don’t have it to worry about in the morning.

What else can you do? Maybe you are an animal lover and can advertise feeding and walking dogs while people are on vacation-I’m sure you’re kids would love to do it with you!

Hey how about starting a blog? I don’t expect that I will be getting any income from this blog, but I love writing these posts and I use them as resources myself because I can’t remember everything. It makes me happy knowing that my sharing of these posts may be useful to someone.

PLEASE COMMENT below with any other ideas! Do you make stuff to sell?  How do you make a little extra? We would love you to share!

Make it a great day!

Jexi