Run a Daycare in Your Home or Rent a Place?

One of the most common questions I get from people who are thinking about starting a daycare is whether or not to do it in their home or to rent a place.

Well, the first question is whether your home is big enough and can you spare the space? If so, this can save you a lot of money on rent. Of course, your home needs to meet fire department criteria and be otherwise suitable to have a daycare in it for this to work (if you live on the 3rd floor in a building without an elevator, this won't work), but if it does, it can be a major advantage.

Another good thing about having a daycare in your home is the time you save on commuting. It gives you more time to be with your own family and leaves you with more free time during each day.

But, starting a daycare center in your home has one limitation: you're limiting yourself to the size you can spare. Most homes will not be able to accomodate many children, so this is something that you need to decide upon: how many kids do you want to have in your day care? Will the space you can allocate for your business be enough? If not, will renting a place and having more kids mean more profit for you?

Of course, you can always decide to rent a place later after you've been in business for a while. So, this is not a life or death decision.

Having a daycare in your home will mean that your personal life and business are less separated than other people's. This is something which some people love and others hate. Make sure that your home is separated from your business as much as possible. We all need our home to be our private sanctuary. That being said, don't wait on this decision for too long. It is changeable. Just decide on a place and get moving on opening your day care center