Being Frugal with Your Laundry and Saving Money

OK, so you've done your wash, used all your money saving features you can find, but now your washing is wet, and it needs drying. First off, ditch that dryer, as I said earlier, running a dryer for one hour uses as much electricity as the average three bedroom house does for a whole day!! Think about that, wow, how much would that cost you over your lifetime - that amount of money doesn't even bear thinking about! However, if you simply can't bring yourself to get rid of the machine, then try these little tips, don't fill the dryer, only put a half load in it, and put in a dry towel as well. That way the half load will dry dramatically quicker than a full load (even two half loads will dry quicker than one full load), and the dry towel will help to absorb moisture from the wet clothing, thus making the clothes dry quicker again.

If you do decide to ditch your dryer - good for you! Get your washing in the garden, clothes that have been dried outside, always smell so much nicer. You can buy a rotary washing line from most supermarkets or hardware stores, buy if your really on a budget, that you can buy a string (plastic coated cord) line for almost pennies, you simply attach one end to your house or a post, and the other end somewhere down your garden, like a fence post. I'd also say at this point to purchase wooden pegs, plastic pegs, really don't seem to last as long, the go brittle and snap, which isn't what you want when your hanging your smalls on the line!

For those of you who are really struggling with the finances, you can try manual washing, any lingerie can be washed in the sink by hand with a little amount of washing powder, and the rest can be washed in the bath. However before you go off trying to hand wash all your clothes in the bath, it is hard work, you'll need to walk all over your clothes for a long time to get them clean, you'll need to keep rinsing them out, which can be difficult, and wring them buy hand, and drying them can also be a problem, as you'll not have had the benefit of the spin cycle on the washing machine. If you don't have a huge amount of laundry to do however, this is always an idea.

In the winter months, you may find drying outside to be a bit of a challenge. This is when you need to make the most of your radiators. When you put your heating on to heat your house, get a clothes airer and hang your clothes on it and put them near to the radiator, the excess heat will help to dry your clothes. Any thing that you can hang on a hanger can be hung in doorways, often you'll find they'll dry quite happily over night when hung in a doorway.

So just by changing the way you do the laundry a little you can save quite a substantial amount of money.