I don’t have a washer or dryer. I used to have to take all my clothes (when I was down to my last couple pairs of socks I’d usually have a 50 pound duffel bag full of laundry for about a week and a half or two weeks)
I used to have to carry said duffel bag on my shoulders hunched over about 5 blocks to the laundrymat to spend about 20 bucks to wash and dry it. I also have several sets of uniforms for work (sometimes I even have to wear a shirt twice here and there when I can’t make it to the laundrymat).
I recently got something called a Wonder Washer and a Spin Dryer(doesn’t dry as well as an actual dryer, but good enough where a very short time hanging in front of a fan and all clothes are dry).
Saves me time (lots of it) money (lots of it) and doesn’t take too much time (I just wash every day or every other day’s laundry when I get home from work and hang out for a couple hours before bed… I work the evening shift). Also there’s the added bonus of never having dirty laundry ever.
What are your time and money saving tidbits?
There’s a place called “Canned Food Grocery Outlet” not too far away that sells overstocks and such-like. I can fill my trunk for $80 or less.
Once I bought a huge container of baking soda. I found you can wash your closthes in it (it won’t get the whites whiter, but it usually works) and clean most of the house with it.
I already try to shop for the most economical cell phone plan, cable bundle, etc. I keep an eye on those types of things just to see if there’s a better way to save money. Stay aware of utility usage, such as not running gallons of hot water down the drain when rinsing dishes and leaving lights on everywhere.
A big place I try to save money is food. We love to eat, and eat well, we enjoy cooking and going out, and those things can add up rather quickly. I’m all over shopping with coupons and buying what’s on sale rather than choosing a few recipes to make and then buying all the ingredients at full price. Buy staples when they are on sale, that way you’ve got a stocked pantry and have whatever you need on hand to make a meal with the reduced price meat/vegetables you buy on sale. Learn some basic cooking skills if you’re eating prepared foods, an amazing savings can be found just doing that.
I do all the standard stuff. Shopping sales and matching up coupons with the sale items, taking the subway instead of owning a car, buying my metrocard online to save 2.5% on the cost of transportation, etc. Recently I have been trying to find ways to bring down my bills and I have taken to keeping several bottles of water in the freezer. In the summer I will have ice cold water for when I am out and about in the heat and keeping the freezer full will cause it to cool more efficiently and bring down my electric costs.
I am also keeping a better eye on serving sizes. For example, I am cutting the amount of meat and cheese I eat in half to make it stretch. Also, a box of cereal holds 8 servings, not 3. That gives me several extra days worth of breakfast at no additional cost AND it will help me lose a bit of weight.
Thanks for the tip on the little washer and dryer! I will be getting one of those washers ASAP!
A second thanks on the w/d links - I’m getting one right away. I have a full-size washer & dryer but would love to drastically reduce the number of times I use them.
I’m putting up a clothesline for the first time in years. What has stopped me before was HOAs that forbid them. I can only use it part of the year, but that’s okay. Every little bit helps. Also, I make my own laundry soap - Borax, baking soda, and shredded Kirks Castile soap. Works great, easy on the environment, and I get a lot of bang for my buck.
I used to make all my own soap, until they pulled lye off the shelves. Now the price break is gone, so I stock up at Trader Joes a couple times a year instead.
I’m looking at making cat food at home, utilizing inexpensive chicken thighs, a grinder, and some supplements. I should be able to save a few bucks a week and get the guys far superior food to even the Science Diet they eat now.
Other than that, crockpots are your friend - 5 quarts of chili or pasta sauce goes a long way cheaply. If you are near a decent Farmers Market, buying the fresh veggies locally and in season is great.
Seconded on making your own laundry detergent - I use this recipe. You can use whatever cheap bar of soap you like. My husband is a postal worker who walks his route, so he tends to get his work uniforms rather dirty, but he really likes how well the homemade stuff performs. I use the linked recipe to make a batch with half the water for a concentrated gel.
Mrs. Cake, you actually don’t need to stop using your clothsline in winter… Sublimation (the same process that gets rid of your ice cubes gradually if you don’t use them) works, though slower than regular drying on a hot dry summer day.
Your laundry will freeze first, then gradually over a day or two at most will dry out as the ice goes away. Yes, its slower, but it does in fact work.
Oh, and I know this is probably a basic obvious one for most people… But I didn’t really own much tupperware until recently when I went to the supermarket and got like 30 store brand containers of all sizes and shapes (you know, those disposable but reusable containers). Didn’t cost me too much and now if I have leftovers of ANYTHING it goes in the fridge (which I try to clean out once a week to prevent unidentified containers). Masking tape with the name and date on it works well too.
Yeah, I know this sounds basic… but I’ve lived the college lifestyle for a while now and usually everything’s either premade or you just eat what you can and oh well for that last serving, toss it.
Is there a way to make smaller batches of this, like a gallon at a time? I would love to save money on detergent, and this seems simple enough, but we live in a tiny apartment, and just don’t have room to keep 5 gal. of slime anywhere. In the concentrated version, how much do you use per standard washload?
I clean my eyeglasses using underwear moistened with isopropanol. Then I let the underwear dry for 24 hours and wear it the next day. This works every bit as well as buying ridiculously expensive eyeglass cleaning tissues and cleaning solution, and creates no extra laundry. There are also two sterilized square inch regions on my underwear, though I don’t know how to extract any utility from that, nor from the 24 hour underwear staging area…
Since it’s official Pool Opening Day, I’ll talk about my pool.
Those who own pools in colder climates know that you have to cover the pool during the winter. There are dozens of different covers available, none of them cheap, but none of them satisfactory.
Once you buy the cover, you need to hold it down at the edges. We have tried the following:[ul][li]Long water tubes: The squirrels poke holes in them.[/li][li]Milk jugs and 5-gallon buckets: Looks like crap.[/li][li]Fancy plastic water boxes: Works fine for a year or two, but you need to store them and they aren’t cheap. Begin to crack. The covers blow off.[/ul]And, after the winter, you need to wash off the tarp, very time consuming, and put it away, and wash all of the water containers.[/li]
My new technique: Black plastic + bags of mulch.
I buy a roll of the heaviest gauge black plastic that Home Depot sells and use that to cover the pool. I then buy 20 bags of black mulch and lay them around the edges of the plastic pool cover to hold it down.
When the springtime comes I simply drain off the cover, toss it, and use the mulch in front of the house around the plants.
Alcohol will damage at least some plastics. I used to use alcohol on my glasses, too, but it was more expensive in the long run, as the frames developed a frosty look and then broke. Nowadays I simply clean my glasses with soap or shampoo while I’m in the shower. Works great.
When it’s something of the chop’n’munch variety (like carrots or green peppers or pomegranates or onions), I do the work on a section of junk mail flyers. No scratches on the counter, no expensive hot water wasted washing dishes, and if you’re dumping the pieces into a stewpot, you can roll it up into a funnel!
And let the Chinese buying all the paper for recycling worry about it after that.
Hey, I like that idea! (Although no doubt our resident germophobes will be aghast because the flyers have come through your door and lain on the OH NOES floor, and before that someone touched them with their BARE HANDS and they might have been in a non-sterile environment and UR ALL GONNA DIE :eek: :eek: )
My Mum used to do this using old newspapers. She’d pile a couple up, slice them down the fold, and have about 30 sheets of newsprint to do those kinds of dirty jobs on. It probably wasn’t 100% healthy with all that ink, but she always boiled the bejesus out of those veges anyway.
Well, they don’t put fish and chips in newspaper anymore, because of the ink contamination risk. I doubt it was much of a problem at all, but they did it anyway. Shame; it was a tradition I liked.