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Look around your home. You could be sitting on a goldmine and not know it. How much is there around you that you don't use or that you don't use much of the time?

Sure, some things you could sell to make money if you don't want them anymore. But long-term a more lucrative option is to rent them.

There are loads of things you could rent, and lots of ways of doing it:

You could rent almost anything on the new 'eBay for renting' www.rentrino.co.uk. This site, which has just launched, enables you to rent anything to anyone. So if you're not using your car and you would like to rent it out for the next month, put it on the site and make some money out of it.

If you have some power tools, evening dresses, or even a spare elephant, put them on the site and see who might like to rent them for a day, a week or a year or more. You would be surprised what could be of interest to others. Hey, if your spouse is hanging around the house getting under your feet...

Got a driveway, a garage you don't use or even an empty patio? If you live somewhere where people need to park their cars, you could rent your space to them.

A simple notice on your front gate could do the trick. Or, check out the website www.parkatmyhouse.com which covers the whole country. Take a look now and you could find that there are already people wanting to park where you live. Rent your spare room. This is a particularly good way of making money because you can make up to £4,250 a year by renting a room without having to pay tax on it. You could also make new friends this way.

If you can't bear the idea of sharing your home with someone who could turn out to be hell to live with though, there's the softer option of having short-term foreign students.

There are more and more foreigners coming over to learn English and the English language schools are always looking for good places for them to stay. As you can see here you can make between £35-150 a week, depending on where you live and how nice your place is!

You could also rent your room out to visiting lecturers if you live near a college or university. Writer April Tod has been renting a room out to visiting lecturers in West London for years. She charges about £90 a week.

"I do it on a part-time basis and it suits my life very well," she says. "I am very picky about who I have so I don't have people staying all the time. I can go for months without the right person turning up. The one I have at the moment is a mature student who is doing a three month course. He is married with children so he's only here from Sunday night to Wednesday afternoon. As I am away a lot we can go for weeks without meeting each other!"

You don't just have to rent to people, though. If you have an empty, dry basement or a spacious loft you could rent them out as storage space. If you have a cellar or garage that has its own means of access, other than your front door, you will be able to charge more because that way you can offer clients their own key and 24-hour access.

As with renting out a room or your home, make sure you have a contract that you both sign that includes rights and duties on both sides, what access the client will have to their stuff (is it 24 hour or will they have to contact you first to get at it?), how much the rental will be and what period of notice should be given either side if the stuff is to be removed.

You could make anything from £5 a week for storing a few boxes in your loft to around £50 for filling a garage in central London.

Don't forget the garden. If you don't have the time or inclination to look after it yourself you could rent it out as allotments, particularly if you live in a city. In London there is an average waiting time of 10 years for allotments, so if you don't mind people coming into your garden whenever they like and growing whatever fruit and veg (and possibly flowers) that they feel like planting, then it's a good way to make some extra cash and keep the weeds off the place.

Municipal allotments charge very little - between £10-30 a year, but if you did a private arrangement you could charge as much as the market would bear.

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Jasmine Birtles is from Money Magpie - the website that gives you a richer life