Everyone is trying to pinch pennies these days. These simple tips to save money on laundry will help save when you’re doing the wash.
For more tips on saving money, check out all of our frugal tips.
We’re all trying to save money right now. I mean, we try all the time, but things are getting really expensive right now. So any way we can save, we’re gonna do it.
Most people think of tangible savings, like using coupons at the grocery store. But you can save on your electric bill with these simple tips to save money on laundry. This definitely adds up. And, even if you don’t see those savings on a receipt like you do when you’re shopping, you’ll see those savings reflected in your electric bill.
10 Simple Tips To Save Money On Laundry
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We tried to make this list in order of how you do your laundry, so you can think of the steps and savings logically.
Do full loads of laundry
When you’re doing laundry, you want the washer to be as full as possible. Of course, don’t overstuff it because then your clothes won’t get clean. But, it’s better to do one full load rather than two half loads. You’ll use half the energy that way.
That may mean that you’ll end up waiting to do laundry a little longer than you usually do. Which is fine, right? I mean, no one I know is ever in a rush to do the wash.
Wash laundry in cold water
If you’re able (check your laundry detergent for this), wash your laundry in cold water rather than hot water. Some detergents won’t work in cold water, but if yours does, washing laundry in cold water saves electricity.
See, when you wash in hot water, electricity is used to heat that water. If you wash in cold water, that electricity isn’t used, so you won’t have to pay for that electricity.
Wash during off-peak hours
Electricity is (generally, depending on your electric company) cheaper at night than it is during the day. There’s less demand on the grid at night, and so, if your electric company uses Time of Use rates (TOU rates), anything you do at night is cheaper than anything you do during the day.
So, if your electric company does use TOU rates, find out when off-peak hours start and wash your laundry then.
Air dry when you can
The dryer uses a lot of electricity. So, if you don’t have to use the dryer, you don’t have to pay for that electricity.
Pick up a nice drying rack (preferably a metal one that doesn’t fall apart when people walk by; we have this one and have used it for years). A collapsible one (which ours is) is easy to store.
Dry whatever you can on the drying rack, rather than drying it in the dryer and using electricty.
Clean the dryer lint trap
We have a list of Ten Things You Forget To Clean In The Laundry Room, and one of those things is the lint trap. Not the dryer lint screen. That’s the piece that pulls out and accumulates all the lint. People remember to pull that out and clean it.
But, the lint trap itself, where the dryer lint screen lives, doesn’t get cleaned as often as it should. Please. Clean them both and clean then often.
An unclean dryer lint screen makes the dryer work a lot harder to dry your clothes (similar to how an unchanged air filter makes your HVAC system work harder). And if the dryer is working harder, it’s using more electricity, which is costing you more money.
Dry like items together
When you’re drying items, you want to dry similar items together because they’ll take a similar amount of time to dry. Dry towels with towels and shirts with shirts.
If you mix and dry towels with shirts, the shirts will be done long before the towels are. So you’ll end up running the dryer longer than if you just dried all your shirts together. If you dry all the shirts together, they’ll all be done at the same time and you won’t be running the dryer longer than necessary.
Don’t overstuff the dryer
You don’t want to overstuff the dryer. You don’t want to understuff it either, to be honest. See, if you have too much in the dryer, the dryer will need more time to dry everything than usual. So you may actually end up needing to run it either longer or a second time to get everything dry.
While things are drying, they ricochet off each other and that helps the drying process. So, if you don’t have enough items in the dryer, they won’t ever get dry (like one shirt in the dryer will basically be the same amount of wet after a full cycle if it’s dried alone).
If you really only need to try a few items, adding dryer balls with your laundry will help to get things dry.
Wash your laundry alone
Don’t try to do all your errands at once. Don’t run your wash, your dishwasher, and take a shower all at the same time. That’s too much water for your house to use at once.
The water pressure will (most likely) be off and your home will work harder trying to get that back up, which (you guessed it) uses more electricity than it would if you just did these things separately.
Purchase an energy efficient washer and dryer
If you have it in your budget, purchasing an energy efficient washer and dryer will help you save on the amount of energy used to do your laundry, which will save you money overall. Of course, with this tip, you’ll need to spend money to save money, so you have to weigh the pros and cons of that decision.
Buy your laundry products with coupons
All those other tips will show you savings on your electric bill. And they might be so minor, they’re hard to see. But if you buy your laundry products with coupons, you’ll be able to see those savings written on a receipt.
You can find coupons in your Sunday paper. But, if you’re like me and you live somewhere where the coupons are not that great anymore (yay for living outside a metro area), printable coupons can help. You can get ones for Tide and Downy when you sign up for P&G Good Everyday.
It’s free to sign up for P&G Good Everyday. Once you do, you’ll have access to exclusive printable coupons. Right now, there’s one for $4 off Tide.
Plus, through P&G Good Everyday there are two rebate offers on laundry products. There’s one for $15 back when you spend $45 on Tide and Downy products and a second for $$10 back when you spend $30 on Gain products. You have until October 15 to buy the products and need to submit your receipts by November 12.
When you join P&G Good Everyday, you’ll have access to surveys, sweepstakes, digital subscriptions, and rewards like gift cards.
More Laundry Tips:
While you have laundry on the brain, we have a few other laundry-related posts that you might be interested in.
There’s one with our tips for How To Keep Your Laundry Room Smelling Fresh. That goes hand in hand with our Ten Things You Forget To Clean In The Laundry Room. And it also goes with our Organizing Your Laundry Room Done Easy post too. Once it’s clean and organized and smells nice, you might not hate doing laundry.
While you’re doing laundry, make sure your socks stay together with our 4 Laundry Hacks So You Don’t Lose Your Socks.
And, just for fun, check out our DIY Laundry Room Wall Art tutorial.
What are your Simple Tips To Save Money On Laundry? Let us know in the comments.