odd jobsAfter years spending my summer as a workaholic, this summer I returned home and resolved that I would make a conscious effort to not devote all of my time to working and actually get out and be social (weird problem to have, right?). For previous summers, in addition to a main job I was also picking up long shifts four nights a week (mostly weekends) as a restaurant cook. It was great, in theory. My plan was that the extra money from the restaurant would be money spent on socializing (gas, food/drinks and movies), until I realized that this schedule didn’t really allow me any flexibility for having a life outside of work. I was also pretty exhausted, with some Tuesdays topping out around 14 hours, often with barely an hour of combined break time. I’m happy to have left that manic schedule behind, but the extra income was definitely nice. Enter the odd job.

If you’re willing to lower your standards a little (which I’m not condoning, outside of the odd job scenario), there are a variety of short and relatively easy jobs around that provide a little spending cash. The ones I’ve found frequently involve yard work, but as a change of pace, I’ve also done filing and cleaning. For me, the basic requirements is that it’s short (I’ve never had a project lasting more than a week, and most are around two days) and that I can listen to my headphones while I work. If those conditions are met, it’s a pretty satisfying job for me because there’s no stress associated with it.

Completing small projects also tend to give me a huge feeling of accomplishment. And almost every time my monetary compensation has been matched by a sense of enjoyment from the project. One job was pulling poison ivy from a co-worker’s garden because she was highly allergic and I could roll through it and not feel a thing. I listened to a book on tape and was glad that she didn’t spend the next several weeks miserable and itchy. Another was clearing multiflora rose (a dense, tenacious, and incredibly painful variety of thorn bush) from a neighbors garden. Hacking at vines with a machete is downright cathartic, and certainly work I’d do again. My brother has also managed to pick up jobs splitting firewood and helping repair fences, as well as the occasional power-washing job. These are the miscellaneous jobs that come up and no one particularly wants to do, so they’re not always high on the agenda, but with the right mind set they don’t have to be miserable.

Since no one really advertises jobs like this, they’re not always easy to find. Frequently it involves being willing to do jobs that no one else wants to do, or to do them for less than the potential employer would pay someone else to do the job. Fortunately, there’s just an association with student age individuals needing money that people are pretty willing to hire. Some of it is luck, like the poison ivy work, and some of it is audacity. One night I rang my neighbors door bell and told them their garden was being taken over by multi-flora rose (it was a veritable forest) and that I’d be willing to clear it for them. Since the couple with the garden had jobs where they worked long hours (and were generally unwilling to deal with the thorns) they accepted. Even cutting my hours to one night a week at the restaurant was a great way to go for a while, if you can find a similar job that offers such flexible hours.

The other great thing about second jobs or odd jobs is that when you’re earning money, you’re not out spending money. (That’s the obvious bit.) The difficult part is not going overboard, but often an odd job can mean anywhere from a week to a month’s worth of spending money for a cheap dinner (see this week’s roundup for going out to eat on the cheap), or a splurge on books or clothes. With many prices on the rise it may be tougher to find odd jobs but offsetting rising costs makes the extra income all the more useful. Unfortunately for some, lots of extra hours at a second job is necessary just to cover costs and stay out of debt, but for those trying to live below their means who have the time and the inclination, odd jobs are a great way to get some flexible cash. And if you’re careful with it, a surprising amount can actually wind up back in a savings account.

If manual labor isn’t your thing, Aundi also talks about freelance writing as a type of odd job, though for me after hours working a desk job, being outside is what I’m itching for. Make sure you go through the comments as well, to find other sites that will pay for writing. What sort of odd jobs have you had, and how have you found them?