Pennies Pennies Everywhere! Saving Money on Laundry

There are quite a number of ways to save money doing laundry and if you do all of them, over the course of a long period of time, there is quite a bit of money to be saved!

We all do laundry differently based on our family size, time we have, where we do the laundry etc. I will be sharing a number of tips that have worked for me and I hope that readers will tweak these tips to their own way of doing! 

First of all, make sure you have a full load of laundry. If you do smaller loads, you will use water, electricity and time that you would save by doing the largest loads you can at one time. 

Secondly, unless your laundry is very dirty, use cold water. 

Thirdly, use less detergent. I usually buy detergent on sale, sometimes with coupons and in bulk. I like to use all unscented detergents and they are not always on sale as often as the other kinds which is why I buy a fair amount when I can get the unscented. If you are brand specific, you will not get as much on sale which is why I am not picky about the brand, I just want it to be unscented. I don't use a full cap like they recommend, I usually use 1/2 to a 1/4 of the recommended amount. If you want to be super thrifty, you can make your own detergent and there are plenty of recipes to do that online. 

Fourth, you can hang your clothes on a clothesline and save a lot in dryer use. I don't hang clothes on the line a lot for a couple of reasons: 1. Time and 2. Allergies. I love, love, love sheets hung on the line so I usually do that. But that's often all I do on the clothesline. 

One thing I do to save on drying costs is I always rip my dryer sheets in half. Again, I buy unscented sheets. They are really easy to rip in half and I just do it with my hands. If you are a little OCD and want a straighter line, you can cut them. This means, instead of 40 dries like it says on the box, I get 80. Double the sheets! 

Try not to over dry your clothes. This costs money not only on more energy for more drying but also it stresses the clothing and you won't get as much use out of them.

As always, there are so many ways to save money! Every little bit adds up and there are pennies, pennies everywhere! 

Happy Savings!