50% Off Challenge!
June 29, 2008 by kadi
Filed under Around the House
A thought hit me today, as I stood in the shower, rinsing out the excess body wash from my scrubby thing. I always have a lot of left over lather in my scrubby thing, after washing all of my body parts. It just seems wasteful to rinse it out, but how else can I keep from having this repeated problem? Then I realized that the hole in my bottle of body wash is awfully large. If I just pour the body wash into an old soap dispenser and use one pump, it would be sufficient to clean my whole body and not waste a whole bunch. Of course, this was just a theory. So I tried it out and found that it really does work!
From now on, I’ll save at least half the amount of body wash that I used to use, just by pumping out in smaller portions. Then I wondered how much laundry detergent, dish soap and shampoo I could save, per month, just by cutting my portions in half. So I cut my laundry soap down to half. I cut my dish detergent in half and my shampoo usage in half. I can’t wait to see how much longer it will be until I have to buy new bottles of these products! If you have any other household items that you have been able to reduce, while retaining effectiveness, leave them in comments section for me, please. Thanks so much, my new friends!
Hi – it’s been great reading your posts! I couldn’t leave a comment on the last post, so I’m sorry I’m leaving it here. Our family always has a hat contest for the 4th! We work on our hats ahead of time and have a parade. The kids really get into it and most people have themed hats. The best part is that most people use things they already have…My comment for this post is that I beef up spaghetti sauce so we use less. I add stuff like green baby food, chopped veggies or chickpeas that I’ve run through the food processor. Right now there’s only 3 of us so we can get by using half a jar each time. Looking forward to reading others’ ideas!
What a great idea. I am so going to do this. My daughter likes to use my bodywash and always ends up using way more than necessary and I end up buying it too often. Thanks for the idea!
Sometimes I water down the body wash. It comes out too thick and it’s hard to lather it. I use less detergent than it says too. I bought one of those soap dispensers that makes the soap foamy. I discovered the the foamy soap isn’t special; it’s just watered down soap. I started making my own “foamy soap” by watering down my own hand soap. This is better for my skin anyway because my skin is so dry. Plus, it takes less water to wash off the soap.
I water down my liquid fabric softener by at least 1/2. If you really want to be thrifty you can forget the softener and use vinegar in the rinse cycle but I’m still hooked on the smell of fabric softener so I don’t do that. I also make my own laundry detergent and save a ton of $ there!
We’ve been doing the same (but with shampoo) for about a year now and it makes a HUGE difference!
Cheap “dryer sheets”
Put your liquid fabric softener in a spray bottle, add 50% water.
For each load, spray a couple of squirts on a washcloth and run it with the load.
No static, nice smell and cheap. Also, cuts down on the wax build up on your lint screen that comes from standard dryer sheet.
Also, we bought a new washer a couple of months ago. I got a front loader which not only uses much less water, but only a tablespoon of laundry soap per load.
I’m still on the same bottle of detergent I bought when I bought the washer.
LOVE it.
Lately I have been trying to find ways to cut back on what we use – easy things like not leaving the water running while brushing our teeth, using a timer to take a shower (kind of a fun challenge), and used dryer sheets make great work of cleaning up the floor. I also switched from windex to vinegar and water and from expensive bathroom cleaners to bleach water in a spray bottle. I have watered down thick shampoo and learned that the foaming soap is easier and cheaper to make than buying it from the store! Just a little bubble bath or shampoo with water and presto!