Laundry Room Savings

The following is a guest post from Kimber Chin (http://businessromance.com/) who writes romance novels based in the business world. Her book, Breach Of Trust, is available now. She also blogs at http://www.nolimitsladies.com/.

Do you remember the theme song from that 1980's movie The Neverending Story? I sing that each week about laundry. The neverending laundry. I shouldn't complain. There is only the hubby and I. My Mom had 6 kids. She did laundry, several loads, every single day.

That can add up. So how to save money?

I'm very choosy about the clothes I purchase, avoiding dry clean only material. Dry cleaning seems to be mostly a North American phenomena. Europeans hand wash their suits. Unless the outfit is ultra expensive or sentimental, I try to do the same. Yes, I've ruined clothes that way.

I also stretch the amount of time between washing. I wear shirts under my blazers. If I have a choice between a sweater and a cardigan, I wear the cardigan with a tee underneath.

I use less. I use less than the recommended amount of laundry detergent. A washing machine repairman once told me that if you see bubbles in your final rinse water, you're using too much soap. Too much soap can leave residue on your clothes and damage your washing machine.

I use cheapie shampoo to get rid of the hubby's nasty ring around the collar and pit stains. Yeah, gross. Shampoo is specially designed to remove oil. Very effective (and gentle) on clothes too. If you travel a lot, use the tiny bottles of shampoo left in your hotel room. Any self respecting hotel discards these after each desk (for fear of people tampering with them).

I always wash in cold. I come from the farm. We didn't have running water, we drew our water from wells and the nearby river. We certainly didn't heat the water up on our wood stoves to wash clothes in. If cold water is good enough to take stable muck out of farm clothes, it is good enough to wash my city folk clothes. If there's a stain, I'll leave it to soak overnight.

I usually hang my laundry. That lint in the dry lint trap? That's your clothing, eaten away by the dryer. Dryers are very hard on your clothes. They also cost money to run. Hang drying doesn't take any more time than using the dryer. If I do have to use the dryer, I only use half a fabric softener sheet. I haven't seen any difference.

Finally, the nasty part, ironing. I save up all my ironing for one big iron-athon. I blast music, I dance around, I save money. Why? Because much of the cost of ironing is heating it up. Oh, and I save time because I only have to set up the once. Very efficient.

I'm always looking for some great tips on how to save time and money in the laundry room. What are some of yours?