Top Laundry Hacks for Frugal Families on a Budget – How to save money doing the laundry for everyone in the family. Easy and simple hacks that will change the way you do laundry and help you to live frugally and save money in the process.
Elephant in the room: everyone has laundry. Shocking, right? 😉
Of course everyone does laundry! But here’s the deal: some people pay a LOT more for doing their laundry than others. That’s where the big difference comes in.
After years of doing loads and loads (and loads!!!) of laundry, there are some things that I can share with you about how I save money on my family’s laundry. And – I promise! – none of these hacks are nonsense. They’re real. We have used these hacks for years and I know that they will help you start to save money with your laundry too!
Top Laundry Hacks for Frugal Families on a Budget
4 Bag Laundry Sorter Cart
This laundry hamper is a game changer! Perfect for sorting delicates, lights, or just keeping everyone is the family’s clothes separate. It makes sorting laundry easy and it even gets kids to help more! LOVE it!
It makes loading the laundry and putting everything away super easy. I especially love this for unloading the dryer. It makes it so easy to just hand each person their own bag of clean clothes.
Wool Dryer Balls
If anyone asks me what my top tip is for saving money with laundry it’s this: wool dryer balls. Skip the dryer sheets and use these guys. They last forever, are non-toxic, fluff your laundry, cut down on static, AND cut your dry-time drastically. They last up to a year and are really fantastic!
White Vinegar
White vinegar is like the frugal duct tape of the world. Use it in the washer instead of fabric softener. Use it in the dishwasher instead of expensive jet dry to get spot-free dishes. If you forgot laundry in the dryer over a weekend (guilty!), add a cup of white vinegar and run it again and you’ll never have to deal with musty-smelling clothes. (There are so many other ways to use white vinegar, too!)
(Pro tip: Don’t get it online unless you have Amazon Prime Pantry – otherwise, just go to the store and get it there).
2- Ingredient Laundry Detergent
I’ve been making my 2-ingredient laundry detergent now for 4 years and it’s the best! It seriously costs $25 for the whole year for laundry detergent for a family of 5.
All you really need are washing soda (it looks like this – not baking soda!) and OxiClean. And that’s literally it!
Delicate bags
This is a weird one, so bear with me here. Use delicate bags for socks so you NEVER lose them!
Do you know how many kids socks I’ve lost over the years!? This little trick saves me so, so, SO much money in having to buy more socks for the kids over and over.
Just have everyone put their own dirty socks into their own bag and never lose a sock again!
Essential oils instead of fabric “refreshers”
I get it! We all want to smell like a dryer sheet when our clothes come out of the dryer. But those “refreshers” are expensive and really not super great for the environment. Plus, just getting something so your clothes smell temporarily better… think frugally here – is that really worth it? (Spoiler: when you’re pinching pennies, no).
Plus, you can add the essential oils to the wool dryer balls in the dryer and add to the scent boosting.
So here are the essential oils that I use in my laundry:
Tea tree essential oil (disinfectant, gets rid of musty smells)
Orange essential oil (smells great, is uplifting)
Lavender essential oil (disinfectant, lightly floral scent)
Wash ONLY in cold water
Do you know how much money you can save if you only wash your family’s laundry in cold water rather than hot or warm water? It’s a lot!
The best part about my 2-ingredient detergent is that it works in both hot and cold water. So there’s no need to adjust the ingredients or prep process.
Air dry as much as you can
You know that using the clothes dryer is a huge way expense, but I get it – air drying isn’t ideal. But if you can just do some of your laundry air dried, that could make a huge difference.
I have 2 different lines to air dry my clothes. The first is my standard air drying rack that I can take outside and fold up or move wherever I want it to go.
The other is the line that I have directly in my laundry room (it looks like this). It collapses back up and I can use it without my laundry being in my kitchen or when it’s too cold outside.
Make sure that your loads are full (but not overfull!)
My husband drives me nuts when he does the laundry – he runs these tiny loads of laundry! If costs the same for a FULL load of laundry as it does for a teeny tiny load of laundry.
So why not make it count?! The best thing you can do is to make sure that the loads of laundry you are running are as full as they can be.
But there’s a flip side to that, too. You can’t overfill the laundry. It will compromise how well your clothes get washed and that could mean having to rewash everything. So don’t do that either!
The bottom line is that there are so many fantastic and easy ways to save money when you do the laundry.
Just always try to think of it in a way that keeps it FUN! Sorting laundry is now fun and easy thanks to the laundry sorters. I don’t freak out about the cost of laundry detergent because of how inexpensive it all is. My wool dryer balls last so, so long and I don’t have to worry about needing to buy more of them more than once a year.
Other ways to save money and live frugally around the house:
- We Live on ONE Income
- 11 Expenses to Stop Spending Money On
- Money Saving Hacks from an Extreme Cheapskate
- 10 Habits of Highly Frugal People
- How to Save for the Newly Frugal
- Top 6 Things You NEED to have in Your Frugal Kitchen
- How to Make Saving Money Easy
- 10 Money Saving Challenges to Start Today!
- 20 Things Frugal People Don’t Do
- 10 Crazy Money Saving Amazon Hacks
How do you save money on your laundry routine? Do you have laundry hacks that you love? Share them in the comments!
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