How to Save Money on Laundry
Living well means spending less on some things, more on others. The ways you save and the things you save money on vary from person to person. Laundry tops the list of items we all do weekly (hopefully) that you can save money while doing.
Many of the articles I read on this topic had some unrealistic advice for most of the US, especially Oklahoma, my adopted home state. The majority of the advice would not work for my home state of South Carolina either. In both places, the temperatures hit the 90s and 100s every summer, sometimes in spring.
1. Wear Clothes More Than Once Before Washing
That outs the advice of many sites that you wear some items multiple times before washing them. Sure, if you live in Alaska, you could wear your blue jeans three or four times before washing them. Of course, that’s out if you clean a lot of fish or happen to wear them whaling. (They do that. Just ask my friend Chie.)
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In some places, it might work to wear a piece of clothing a few times but wash it just once every few weeks. Most of the US needs a different approach though. Let’s delve into how to save money on laundry and still have clothes that remain clean and smell good.
2. Shop Around For a Cheap Laundromat
You could bargain shop for a local laundromat. While most charge from $2.50 all through $10 per load, if you research it, you can find cheap laundries close to you. While many laundromats probably have websites now, you may have to phone a few. A quick search in your favorite search engine will provide you with a local list with a mileage range of about five miles.
If you can find one that only charges about a buck each, you can wash one or two loads per week rather cheaply. This option works best for a single person.
3. Buy a Washer And Dryer
Perhaps you need to wash clothes for your entire family though. Let’s say you’re the typical family of two adults and two children. You wash a lot of clothes and towels and sheets and probably some band or sports uniforms. The laundromat route would prove way too expensive for you when you do the math of driving there and paying for the washing and drying.
Whirlpool washer and dryer set
Image Source: www.whirlpool.com
You can purchase a reasonably priced washer and dryer though. You could purchase a stackable Whirlpool set for just around $1000. If you are a single person, currently doing laundry once per week and washing and drying two loads each time at an averagely priced laundry that charges $3 for washers and for dryers, that’s $12 per week. By purchasing the Whirlpool or a set like it, you will pay yourself back for the purchase in a little more than four years.
If you have a family though and need to do more loads, you pay yourself back even faster. A family of four washes eight to 10 loads per week. Figuring on the low end of the expenses, you spend $24 per week if you go to the laundromat to wash eight loads. It takes you only a little more than one year to pay yourself back for the purchase of the washer and dryer set.
Savings Related to Buying a Washer and Dryer
You also save money by washing laundry at home. The average cost of doing a load of laundry at home amounts to $2-3.
If you hang your clothes out to dry on a line rather than using a dryer, you save even more money!
By cutting out trips to the laundromat, you save on transportation costs, too. You either use gas to travel there or take the bus. Even if you are single and walked there, you spent your time traveling there and back to your home and that was time you could have been making money.
Drying clothes naturally also reduces your monetary costs, but it increases your time costs. I won’t go too far into what I learned in economics classes from Dr. Dan Sutter, but you need to do the math and figure out what saves you the most money. If you make $15 per hour but hanging out the laundry on an outside line takes an hour because you do that much washing, then it would cost you much less in the long run to buy and use the washer.
Buying and Installing a Clothes Line
You might want to hang the laundry out though, because you want to live an environmentally conscious life. In this case, you prioritize living environmentally over losing the $15. You make the choices for yourself. For a single person, it might make sense to hang out the wash. For a family of four or more, it probably would not.
You can purchase an outdoor laundry line for less than $10. You either need to install posts to run it from one to the other or you attach one end to your home and the other end to a post you install. These posts need to be very sturdy and cemented into the ground.
Two T-posts cost $75 each. You could purchase a circular line that encircles a single post for about $50. You need a backup for when it rains, so pick up one of these handy indoor laundry lines. You can spend just $20 to hang your clothes over your bathtub to dry.
4. How To Save Money On Laundry By Buying Scratch And Dent Machines
Having this backup means you can skip purchasing the washing machine. You could buy a washer by itself for about $500 to $700. As long as you have an American Freight store near you, you can pick up great deals since they sell scratch and dent items. They’re all new but if they happen to incur a gouge or a scratch on the way from the manufacturer to the store, the regular stores like Walmart and Home Depot do not sell them, typically. Instead, stores like American Freight and Big Lots pick them up and sell them.
You save 25 to 50 percent on your purchase of new appliances by shopping at these stores.
A lick of paint fixes the gouge or scratch when you get it home and you have a brand new washer or dryer for half of what you would normally pay. Everything they carry is name brands, so you can find Amana, Kenmore, Samsung, Whirlpool, and similar famous-maker brands at these stores.
Depending on which advice you choose in this article, you could start saving up to half off of what you typically spend each week on washing and drying your laundry. You can put the extra money towards paying off a credit card or loan. You could also put it into savings.
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