Effortlessly Saving Money-Wash in Clold!

Well it's Friday again, and time for another edition of Effortlessly Saving Money.

Consider washing your clothes in cold water. Yes, they get clean! (I do wash all towels as well as undies in hot water and my girl's clothes in hot because she gets so much FOOD on them)

Sometimes I purchase the Tide Cold Water version and sometimes I don't (I think it's time for me to check out Consumer Reports and do another detergent comparison.) Depends on how much cash I feel like spending on the wash when I'm at the grocery store. Anyway, our clothes look fine and I believe conventional wisdom is that they last longer in cold.

At the very least, rinse in cold. Your clothes are already clean, they don't need additional hot water to finish the job. I have the wonderful Whirlpool front loader pictured at the top. (And I will wax poetic about front loaders in another post-17 gal of water vs 40 for a traditional machine for starters!) Anyway, that washer ONLY rinses in cold. You don't even get a choice. I figure all of Whirlpool can't be wrong. And if you are using a traditional washer the savings is even bigger!

Another tip that I would also like to add is good for the planet as well as your wallet!

Effortlessly Saving Money-Rechargeable Batteries

I go through 4 batteries a week. 2 in my camera for my eBay business and 2 in my book light that I use almost every night. At the cost of Wegman's batteries, this comes out to $101.14 per year (It would be even more expensive if I didn't purchase the generic batteries) Not to mention the environmental impact of 208 batteries floating around a landfill for who knows how long as well as all of the packaging for said batteries.

Solution! Re-chargeable batteries. Back in January I got 4 batteries and a charger for $20 . (And I just saw the same exact set in Big Lots last week for $10) This is too easy! I don't even have to remember to buy batteries anymore. I plan to have them longer than the year so my savings will be much more than $100 for this simple thing. The charge seems to last longer than the normal batteries do too!

Effortlessly Saving Money-Turn Off Your Computer

I think I'm going to start a new feature each week on Fridays. Yes, I know it is Thursday night. But most of you will be reading this on Friday so I'm still going to count this as a Friday post.

Anyway, I've always thought that there are a lot of easy ways to save money that aren't hard and don't take a lot of extra effort, but they may be things you (or I) haven't thought of. So each Friday I think I'll explore one of these areas and post the potential savings. Please feel free to send me some of your own ideas as I would like to see what else I can be doing and share it with you.

My first one is Turn off your computer at night. I'll admit that I don't do this. But I'll also pledge that I will after I finish this post. Depending on your computer and cost of energy, your savings could be anywhere from $50-$100 a year or more. I looked to a bunch of different sources on this one and was going to write a long post about it but really, you could just read the articles I did. For a nice overview, visit The Simple Dollar. For a specific calculator where you can calculate your own savings visit here. And finally, if you are a real geek, visit Mr Electricity and learn more than you ever wanted to know about the subject.

The calculator told me I would save $47 a year. That might sound small but it's $47 I don't have to shell out. It would also pay for the American Girl Bitty Baby that I want to get my girl for her birthday this year!