Keep renting the inn room? Seriously? Bro that's super lame.
I too want to know this... If anyone has tested it please report.

So sick of dragging all the Dwemer items with me, they're heavy as hell! That reminds me, I need to figure out a good use for them.
In my experience, the storage in inn rooms is crap. It's all marked as "steal from" rather than the usual "search" on the action. As soon as you put stuff into those chests, you get a 1 septim bounty on your head. (This has happened to me about 5 times until I just started cramming my stuff in a random barrel.)
I'm hoping that container resets don't actually happen, but the lack of any real storage before a house is kind of annoying. I expected to be able to at least use inn rooms at the beginning while working toward a house.
My plan is to try the room in the college of magic.
Also considering a mod that addresses some of these issues as soon as the creation kit is available.