Save Money Doing Laundry
June 18, 2009
Washing
Make Sure They are Dirty
Make sure the clothes are dirty before you wash them. They need to look or smell dirty before they go to the laundry room. A couple generations ago when people had to conserve as much as they could they wore clothes several days before washing them.
Wash in Cold
Most clothes do just fine in cold water. Why run that hot water heater???
Wash Full Loads
Only wash full loads. Don’t waste electricity on small loads.
Towels
Towels take up a lot of room and water in the washer. Assign a towel to each person (use different colors or write their name on it), then one day a week you wash all the towels. I will admit this takes A LOT of diligence on the part of the mom, it is a lot of habit training, but it will help a lot once everyone gets in the habit. It also helps with teaching responsibility. Towels are a big struggle at our house. 
/
Stain Remover
Jeff does hard dirty work, so the need for a stain remover is always great! I keep a bottle of dawn on hand for stains. Just a little dab, rub it in and let it sit overnight. Does the trick most of the time. And it works great on any greasy food stain.
Make Your Own Detergent
There are dozen of recipes on the web. Here is a tutorial that Tammy did. I will be giving this a try next week.
Drying
I LOVE my clothesline!!! We got the idea of running a line from the back deck to the storage shed on pulleys, after being on vacation and seeing how the Amish people run their looooong lines from their house to the barn.
I love that I do not have to go off the deck, I just step out the back door and do my duty. )
Use a Bag
Be sure to use a bag or something to keep your pins in. If you are hanging without pins it will be a pain. Pins easily get scattered without some sort of bag. Olivia made this one because she wanted something happy to look at! ;o)
Save Time in Your Hanging
Hang your clothes from the bottom. Ex. Hang your jeans from the cuffs and pull the pockets out so they will dry completely. Hang T-shirts from the waist line so you don’t have hanging marks on the shoulders.
Mate up your socks as you hang. When you take them down they are all ready to be rolled up.
I like to hang a load or two out late in the day, like after 7-8 pm. I feel like I have a jump on the next day, and the clothes are dry by mid morning, which keep my line moving!!! )
Your Clothes Will Last Longer
Dryers are hard on clothing. Every time you empty that lint filter, that is actually parts of your clothing.
Turn Your Dryer Off at the Breaker
This will help against the urge to use the dryer. Our breakers are outside our house, so it really helps. )
15% Off Your Utility Bill
The dryer accounts for at least 15% of your utility bill.
Clean and Fresh
Sunlight bleaches and disinfects your clothing. Be careful not to leave them out for more than a day or so, they may get too much bleaching and fade the clothes.
Time to Pray
Use your time at the line to pray for your family as you hang their clothes. Encourage your children to do this too when it is their turn to do the laundry. As each piece is hung, pray for that person’s needs, or pray a special blessing for them. Hanging the clothes out is a time to focus and retreat.
Topics: Family Economics, Frugal Choices, Homemaking, Resourcefulness | 16 Comments »
Comments (16)
I love this. Right now my 10 year old and I take turns hanging out the laundry and doing breakfast dishes. Our dryer has it’s own breaker but it’s very touchy. The last time it flipped I let it go. We can hang the laundry outside and we have a smallish drying rack and hangers in the laundry room doorway for the days (weeks, lately) that it is rainy. It took a few tries to get the hang of inside drying but if i do 3 loads (6 people) one in the morning one right after lunch and one just before bed it works out fine. I am saving for a good quality, larger drying rack for in the winter.
Thanks for these tips… and just for the reminder that we need to focus on these things!
I too love to hang clothes on the line. However, it can be great to put them on hangars and hang them inside on a door jamb. When they’re dry, just hang them in the closet, since they’re already on the hangar. Even if we have to press out a hangar mark, I still think it is easier for me than handling the laundry several different times.
Also, I make my own laundry detergent, and have been very happy with it. I had to purchase most ingredients online though. I spent about $27.00 and probably will not have to re-purchase at least for the remainder of the year.
As for stains, I’ve been using Mean Green for years. I found most stain treatments totally useless. Mean Green has a very strong odor that will take your breath away, but I too have a hubby and sons that work on tractors/cars, farm hay, etc., so they always have very greasy, dirty jeans and clothes. On really bad greasy stuff, hot water and mean green and maybe some bleach will usually get do the job. And don’t forget, when using a spray bottle, use the little square plastic area where the liquid squirts out as a scrubber on the stain!
Happy laundry everyone!
I LOVE this post! Laundry is something most of us struggle with. Thank you for giving some great ideas to help!
by the way.. there are a LOT of Amish around here. Michael and I actually drove by an Amish house for sale (we are looking to buy a home).
Hello,
I use pretty much the same laundry recipe as discussed in the tutorial, but I do not add water, I keep the mixture dry (just mix the ingredients all together and store in a tightly-closing container). I also needed to add some salt to the mixture since we have such hard water here… it took some ‘tweaking’ until it was right for us.
This soap doesn’t create suds, so you have to get over wanting that visual confirmation that it has been added to the water! You only need to add 2 Tbsp to a large load! And we are very happy with the results!
I love the thought about praying while hanging out the laundry. So many of our daily ‘chores’ have such a rhythmn, providing a rich resource for meditation and prayer if we can just settle ourselves, and ~as you so often remind us~ appreciate the opportunity to serve our families instead of grumbling over ‘having to do all the work’.
Shirley
I like the the hanging out, but not the taking in. I’ve been very lax in choosing my dryer rather than hanging. It’s so darn hot outside, even at 8:00am.
Ok, I’m whining!
I already do these things for our laundry – except for the praying part. I love incorporating prayer into routine duties so that I’m sure to “stay connected”. Thanks for the suggestion!
For Shirley…What kind of salt do you use?
Hi,
Just regular table salt (non-iodized) since it is already ground so fine and is the least expensive to find. I realize this is not quite the same chemical reaction as a true water softener, but it seems to give the little extra boost I needed to see with the detergent.
My particular mix turns out to be 1 bar Fels Naptha soap (grated finely – I use my food processor which is heavy duty), 250g each of the borax and washing soda (about 2 cups each), and 50g salt (about 1/4 cup). This batch fits perfect in a 2-quart tupperware-type container.
I agree with all your tips. I’ve been a missionary since I was a teen (I’m a grandmother now) and have been doing the laundry this way almost forever! Including with cold water! (Without a pulley, though.)(And often by hand, when there wasn’t a machine.) I have a machine now, though, and you wouldn’t believe how often I joyfully thank God for it!!!)
One very important tip to add, I think, is this: Because the sun will bleach clothes, as you mentioned, I hang mine inside out. It might seem like a lot of trouble, but it’s worth it. The clothes last soooo much longer!
These are great ideas. I’ve used cold water for laundry for years. When we remodeled our house and brought the laundry out of the basement (yea!) my husband (not a plumber but he plays one sometimes) put in the water and the hot faucet leaked just a bit. I said, “it doesn’t matter, I hardly ever use it.” I keep it off except for maybe twice a year when I need to wash laundry that someone vomited on or if someone has an “accident” and I need to wash soiled underwear.
We have a small swing frame from a porch swing that broke – we put the clothes on hangers and hang them out – in our HOT temps (over 100 in the shade), they are usually dry in an hour or two if spread out – then bring them in and let them sit and finish drying from the humidity – otherwise they feel damp by evening and can make the closets and drawers smell musty.
We also make our own soap – and use vinegar for rinsing. I only have problems with static during the coldest parts of the year, and the towels actually absorb water. I add Eucalyptus oil drops and Tea Tree Oil drops to the soap to kill germs and dust mites. Between 5 – 10 drops of each – I just shake the bottle a bit over the finished and cooled pan of soap and stir it in really good.
[...] Save Money Doing the Laundry [...]
I have been making my own laundry soap & it costs me about $2 to make & it makes about 10x the amount I was getting from 1 bottle of Tide that was costing me $12 at the store. Also for fabric softener I have been using a little vinegar in the wash and instead of dryer sheets I have a mixture of 1 part liquid fabric softener to 2 parts water that I keep in a bucket with a couple of household sponges inside. When I put clothes in the dryer I gab a sponge, squeeze it out and throw it in the dryer. It works great and the mixture lasts FOREVER! I had a half of a container of liquid fabric softener when I first tried this and it has been about 6 months ago & I still have a lot left! I got the laundry detergent recipe from Tipnut.com (they have 10 recipes) and I go the dryer sheet replacement idea from http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html
[...] Here are a few money saving tips for doing laundry. [...]
We live in Maple Ridge, BC, Canada. (SW Cost of BC). Our humidity here is relative high, so it might take a day to dry, especially in the winter (It’s all done inside in the winter – too much rain).
I started line drying about 5-6 years ago when our son started his growth spurt and I wanted to avoid shrinking the clothes, as they often do in the dryer. I try now almost everything on laundry racks. Mine are from Germany, which are more robust then the ones I could get here. Towels go into the dryer, they take too long, and start smelling. I don’t use anything in the dryer, I just put the laundry in.
I haven’t tried cold wash, I found my kitchen cloth, as well as towels, start smelling if I don’t use sani-wash cycle. Probably due to our high humidity, towels don’t necessarily dry out between showers 100%.
It’s funny, looking back, I grew up with line drying, but having lived in an apartment in the city for quite some while, I forgot all about it until 5-6 years ago.
Thank you for all your tips, I ‘ll be looking into making my own detergent.
God Bless!