How Savvy Consumers Save Money By Working Less

The Point of My Epiphany

One day after doing what seemed to be my hundredth load of laundry, I finally decided I had enough. I knew that I needed to find ways to do less laundry and hopefully save money in the process. I wondered whether it was really necessary to launder the sweatshirt that got worn for fifteen minutes or the towel that I used following my second shower of the day. If you can identity with my frustration, you might find the following tips helpful.

Did Modern Conveniences Cause More Work For Us?

Laundry can seem like a never-ending chore, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s probably just the modern convenience of washing machines and dryers that lead us to having more laundry. Why not wash a garment that was worn for merely an hour when it is so easy to wash? Doing so much laundry means you are wasting time and money, and time is money, afterall. If you knew there was a way to save money by having less laundry, would you be interested?

Well, there is. Create less laundry and save money in the process. Unless you have some communicable skin infection, you really don’t need to launder a towel after using it just once. Following your shower, make sure you hang up your towel so that it airs out. If you let it lay in a crumpled heap, you will not be able to reuse it, so make sure you hang it up properly. If you are wearing a t-shirt under a sweatshirt and you only wore the sweatshirt to run errands, you don’t really need to wash that sweatshirt unless you spotted it. It might not seem like that much, but every item that you can avoid washing adds up over the course of a week.

Doing fewer loads of laundry each week means that you will use less water and less laundry detergent. Using less water and less laundry means you will save money. You will also prolong the life of your clothes. Clothes tend to lose their quality when they are subjected to frequent washing and drying, even if you use the delicate cycle.

Some Things Can’t Be Compromised

While there are many things that you don’t need to wash as often as you have been, there are some things that you should always wash immediately after wearing -- even if that means spending money on the water and detergent. You should always wash undergarments after just one wearing, and always wash any clothes that you used when you exercised.

So if you’re tired of being a slave to your laundry and you want to save money, do yourself a favor and break the “laundry cycle” by finding ways to reduce the amount of laundry you do each week.