Having a baby added a lot more of everything to my life.
A lot more laughter. A lot more love.
A lot more laundry. (How can such a tiny little person produce such copious amounts of laundry?)
Here are 10 easy ways to clean your clothes without breaking the bank:
- Use less detergent. I used to fill the detergent cap all the way up. The more, the better … or so I thought. And then my mother-in-law clued me in to this groundbreaking idea — you don’t need to use that much detergent! Now I use about 1/4 cup of detergent for moderately soiled loads, and the clothes come out just as clean.
- Cut dryer sheets in half. That’s right. Just bust out the scissors and cut all the dryer sheets in half. Then use a half sheet per load. Your dryer sheets will last twice as long, and your clothes will be just as soft. I promise.
- Stop using dryer sheets altogether. I know, this is a bit extreme for some of you. A couple of years ago I would never have considered this. But after Little Man’s bout with eczema last winter, I stopped using dryer sheets on his clothes because the fragrance chemicals can irritate sensitive skin. And we’ve never looked back. His clothes are plenty soft and smell just fine. In fact, they smell … like nothing at all. Which, when it comes to baby clothes, is the best smell of all, if you ask me.
- Wash with cold water. We wash all of our loads, except for sheets and towels, with cold water. Why? Since most of the energy used to wash a load goes toward heating the water, you’ll save $60 – $100 a year if you wash 80% of your loads with cold water.
- Play the drugstore game to get detergent for cheap … or possibly for free. Never heard of the drugstore game? It’s a savings strategy that combines sales, coupons and store rebates to score smokin’ deals at CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid. By playing the drugstore game, I’m able to get laundry detergent for $2 or less. (Hint: If you’re interested in trying this out, I highly recommend exploring Money Saving Mom. That’s how I learned how to “play the game.”)
- Make your own homemade laundry detergent. I haven’t tried this yet. But I’m on quite the crunchy kick as of late, and in my quest to eliminate toxic chemicals from our home, I’m planning to try this recipe for homemade detergent once our current supply runs out. It’s ultra cheap, easy to make, toxin-free, and from what I hear … it works. (I’ll update with a review once I’ve tried it myself!)
- Grease stain? Don’t throw it out until you try this. Time was, if a grease stain was found on one of my shirts, that shirt was headed for the trash can. See, I thought that grease stains were the terminal illness of the laundry world. That for which there is no cure. And then, one fateful day, I had this “a-ha!” moment. If Dawn dish soap cuts grease on dishes, will it also cut grease on clothes? Now, when I spot a grease stain, I wet a dish cloth with warm water, add a dollop of Dawn, and scrub the heck out the stain. Then I toss it in the hamper and wash as usual. This has worked for me almost every time I’ve tried it, the exception being a very sad orange t-shirt that no amount of Dawn could save.
- Don’t toss it … fix it. Mister will laugh when he reads this. One of his shirts lost a button a few months ago, and it’s been sitting there in the closet ever since, patiently waiting for some sweet li’l housewife to come along and reattach its button. Poor shirt. The sweet li’l housewife is on her way. She’s just been wrapped up in toddler-wrangling lately.
- Air dry what you can. Clotheslines make me happy. The sight of crisp, clean clothes soaking up the sunshine and blowing in the breeze is truly divine. Alas, I don’t have a clothesline, so I use the old throw-it-over-the-chair-to-dry method for my delicates and anything I don’t want to shrink. Turns out, the dryer is actually quite damaging to clothes. They are much, much happier air drying, the way nature intended.
- When clothes shopping, avoid anything with a “dry clean only” label. In my working girl days, I used to spend about $20 a month on dry cleaning. I now find this to be incredibly amusing. $20? On dry cleaning? The very thought! Now that my “work clothes” consist of jeans and t-shirts, that’s money in the bank. Or money in the diaper fund, if we’re being honest.
What are some of the ways you save money on laundry? I’m always open to new money-saving ideas!
God bless,
Megan
Hop on over! I’m linked up at Time-Warp Wife, Far Above Rubies and Growing Home!
