Being Frugal with Your Laundry and Saving Money

Laundry is a fact of life, someone has to do it, it is the bane of most women's lives. I know it's mine, on average in our house I have to do two loads of laundry a day, just to keep on top of everything. When that's put in to context you'll be amazed how much each load actually cost, you have to pay for the electricity to run your washer, you then have to pay for the water you use, the laundry powder, fabric conditioner, running the dryer and any drying sheets that you may use. I was amazed when I phoned the electricity company to find that running your tumble dryer for one hour costs as much in electricity as running the average three bedroom house for a whole 24 hours.

I don't want you to think frugally about doing the laundry, because it has to be done, so cutting down the number of days a week you do the washing, won't help, because you'll still have to do the same number of loads.

A good starting point for laundry is thinking about what you wear, before you wear it. Denim's are something most people wear a lot of, these are also something that doesn't need washing every time you wear them (unless of course, there dirty, from things like gardening, fixing the car, painting etc). Denim jeans probably only need washing once a week, which believe it or not, will cut lots out of your wash load, for example, if there are 2 adults in your house, each wears a pair of jeans every day, and the end of the week that's 14 pairs of jeans that needed to be washed, which is about 2 extra wash loads, therefore by only washing them once a week you can do 2 less wash loads, which not only cuts down on the time you spend doing washing, it also takes out the cost of 2 wash loads a week. You should think about all the things that you wear, and choose which you can wear a few times before needing washing, this is normally things like sweaters, trousers and skirts. Things that spend a lot of time close to your skin, will normally need washing once worn, an obvious one is underwear, hosiery, t-shirts and other tight fitting clothing items.

Once you've skimmed down what you need to wash and what you can wear a few time, you'll see your laundry pile dramatically decrease. Next you need to turn your attention to the physical cost of doing the laundry. Washing powder - believe it or not this can become very costly. Most people won't change their brand for a cheaper brand as they believe that it will not wash their clothes as efficiently, this for some part it true, but store own brand powders are normally very good. Once you've chosen a cheaper brand of washing powder that you are happy with, half the amount you use. Yep you heard me, half if. Believe it or not, using half the amount is just as effective as using all of it, the same goes for washing tablets if you prefer to use them, only use one and not two. What you can do however, is to invest in washing balls, you can buy these online or from some hardware stores, you simply put the balls in your washing machine and then they pretty much beat up your clothes, knocking out the dirt and grim, you can re-use these over and over again.

Using these balls means you don't have to keep buying washing powder, and they are very environmentally friendly. When you've decided on what you're going to use, you need to think about fabric conditioner, fabric conditioners can be incredibly expensive, but realistically they don't do an awful lot, other than soften some fabrics for easy ironing. However, fabric conditioners will not do any good to your towels, fabric conditioners actually prevent towels from absorbing water. What you really want, is something that will, soften your fabrics a little, as well as getting rid of any grease that may be left over from the wash. The ideal substitute for this is vinegar. Not quite the brown stuff you put on your chips, the type of vinegar you need is white distilled vinegar, you can purchase this from most supermarkets, it's used for pickling as well. All you need is to put one tablespoon full in you washer where you would normally put the fabric conditioner. It will remove any left over grease, soften your fabrics, clean your machine and help protect the machine against lime scale damage.

In the current market it is cheaper it use electricity rather than gas for heating, so I would suggest only using the cold water pipe on your washing machine, this was the water isn't pre-heated by the gas water heater in your house. Turn your washing machine down, wash on 30-40ºC, which means the water is only heated very little, and only wash on 60 when you have to wash bed linen - this will kill any germs that may be lingering. These day's as well, most domestic washing machines have a short cycle, or a half cycle, basically your cutting down the time you need to have your washing machine running, these are excellent at not only saving you time, but also saving you money by not having each load running for over an hour. These money saving features are built into your machine, so make sure you use them.