There are twin evil monsters that live in my apartment complex. Their dull metallic outer frames are only matched in ugliness and vile by their cavernous, gaping, rotating inner mouths. They demand constant sacrifices, and nevertheless things often disappear into their mouths never to be seen again.
They’re the machines in my laundromat.
Don’t believe me? I spend $720 per year, one quarter at a time, feeding the beasts. That’s 2,880 quarters that I have to ask the cashiers and bank tellers to give me. I know; I get the stink eye every time I take their backup rolls of quarters away.
Yet, all I get in return is half-washed clothes. 25% of the time, the dryers proudly present me with a warm, steamy pile of wet clothes.
There are other options for laundromats in my town, don’t get me wrong. But, they require usage of a vehicle that I often don’t have access to since we’re a one-vehicle household.
Related post: How Giving Up My Car Is Saving Me Over $2,000/Year
So, what to do? We’ve found several ways to save money on laundry costs (yep—that’s right; our laundry cost could be even higher than it is now). I’ll tell you more about them in this post.
I’m also considering some more extreme options for how to solve our laundry problem. Maybe you’ll even have a helpful suggestion?
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Big People = Big Laundry
If you want to save money on laundry, then a) don’t be a big person, and/or b) don’t marry a big person.
All joking aside, it does cost more money to do laundry for a bigger person. I’m 5’4” and Zach is exactly one foot taller than me. Fully two-thirds to three-quarters of the laundry we produce each week is directly from Zach.
It used to be even worse—when Zach was working as a carpenter he’d go through enough shirts and pants to fully clothe a third-world country. Now that he’s got an office job, though, he’s much cleaner—now if only I could pull a Honey I Shrunk The Kids on him.
The Laundry Sniff Test: Use It Often And Well
I’ll let you in on a little secret: you don’t need to wash each and every piece of clothing after you’ve worn it once.
Before we throw most items in the laundry hamper, we give it a quick sniff test to see if it really does need laundering. There are a few exceptions: underwear, socks, and shirts get a free pass to the laundry hamper. Please don’t sniff your underwear.
But towels, pants, sweaters, and other items usually can go for several days before needing to be laundered. Hell, my shower towels usually last me a week or two before they need cleaning.
If you’re a habitual clothes-tosser, it can be a little unnerving to wear clothes for several days in a row. But, I promise you won’t turn into a stink bomb. Your towels will be much happier being hung up to dry rather than going through a battering wash-dry cycle after every use. Your pants will not fly off your legs in a fit of panic.
Only Wash Full Loads Of Laundry
This one is kind of obvious…you don’t need to rev up the machines to wash a single sock.
If you don’t have enough laundry to fill a full load, simply set it aside for later. Your clothes can wait. I promise you.
Use The Right Amount Of Laundry Detergent
Gone are the days when I used to simply spray laundry detergent everywhere like an out-of-control firehose.
Now, I buy my laundry detergent in bulk from Costco. I transfer the laundry detergent to a flip-top water bottle so it’s more convenient to take to the laundromat. Then, I have it timed out to a one-and-a-half-second pour to get just the right amount of detergent in the machine.
Use Cheap Dryer Sheets
What do we use dryer sheets for, anyways? To cut down on the static that occurs in the drying process.
Here in Colorado where the humidity level is half-past a pile of sun-bleached bones and a dead cactus, dryer sheets are especially important. Otherwise, I would turn into the Tesla coil man and could rent myself out to circus freak shows (note to self: new side hustle idea, perhaps?).
What happens when laundry isn’t properly dried with a dryer sheet in Colorado. New side hustle idea?
Since we’ve established the base function of a dryer sheet, we can now move past all the fancy shit we don’t need (*cough Bounce *cough) and buy the cheapest dryer sheet that’ll do the trick. I also get these at Costco.
If the fancy Bounce smell is important to you, though, then by all means go for it. But if it’s secondary, then skip it. As for me, my money is better spent on other things—like saving up for a down payment on a house so I don’t have to futz around with all this laundromat nonsense.
Don’t Sort Your Laundry
When I was a kid, my mom made a big production out of doing laundry. One of the biggest tasks was sorting clothes. I was assigned the lucky task of sorting everyone’s clothes into two piles: colors, and whites (composed predominately of dirty socks and tighty-whites).
I’m sorry Mom, but I’m just not gonna go through all that hassle. (Don’t tell her, but I also don’t straighten out the bunched-up socks before washing. Ain’t no one got time for that).
Sorting clothes means that you’ll likely end up with half-full loads. Unless, of course, your home is guided by supernatural accountant fairies who magically add and subtract clothes to create perfectly-full loads of both colored and white clothes each and every week. In that case, I’d like them to manage my beer stockpile too.
Sure, maybe my whites aren’t the sparkly-white bright clothes you see in the laundry commercials. My whites are a little more of the dull eggshell variety.
But hey, that’s why I try to avoid whites anyways. Even if I did meticulously sort and treat my fancy whites separately, they’d quickly be overpowered with my potent armpit stains. Pick your battles.
Buy A Portable Laundry Machine?
Most of my problems stem from the damned laundromat washer and dryer. I’m not able to get a full-size washer and dryer in my apartment, so I might as well just give up on that idea.
But what if there were a way?
Not for a full-size washer and dryer, of course. But, recently I found out about these nifty gadgets: portable laundry machines.
They’re not really portable in the sense that you can just pack one up in your suitcase and jettison off to who-knows-where. Rather, they’re portable in the same sense that hybrid vehicles cost less than big trucks. They’re still expensive (or big), but less so than their balls-to-the-wall counterparts.
For a laundry washing machine, I found this neat little machine that weighs about 25 pounds and fits into a 25” x 14” x 29” space. I’d guesstimate that it’d take twice as many runs to finish our weekly laundry than the full-size machines.
But, it takes half as much time as our current laundry routine, so overall it’d even out. The only thing I worry about is how long it’ll last. Even at $120, though, it’d pay for itself if it lasted two months.
Air Dry Your Clothes (Yes, Even If You Live In An Apartment)
Since I first wrote this post in early 2017, I actually did buy this simple cheap folding rack. Since I live in an apartment and airing out my undergarments out the window is frowned upon, this is the next-best option to an actual laundry line.
We’ve been using the folding rack for about nine months now. Each month, it saves us $25 in quarters that we don’t have to feed to the halfhearted dryers. That means we’ve already saved $225 – enough to pay for the cost of the folding rack several times over!
Plus, our clothes will last longer now that we’re not subjecting them to the equivalent of a brief trip through a windy Death Valley each week. And, even better, we don’t have to buy dryer sheets anymore. Huzzah!
Do you have any other tips to save money on laundry? Leave a comment below!
I “line dry” the clothes I care most about because the dryer is pretty hard on them. By “line dry” I mean I hang them from the door frames in our closet or laundry room for a day or overnight. For items that stretch out easily, I lay them flat to dry on a towel until they’re dry enough to be hung and dried the rest of the way. I think this is the most accessible way to cut down on your laundry costs! During the summer, I line dry sheets and blankets outside, though I understand you have limited room and might not be able to swing this!
One thing I recommend against is making your own detergent. I do this now, but I’ve finally admitted to myself that it’s not as effective as store-bought detergent and the savings are negligible. Plus, grating laundry soap is NOT fun, no matter how many hipster points I earn for doing so. After I’ve used all the ingredients up, I’m switching back to purchasing soap in bulk.
Also, line-drying towels is a no-no — they become really stiff and lose all their softness, which is not conducive to drying off comfortably!
Ha! Good to know the DIY detergent doesn’t work…I’d been thinking about that recently too. Bummer you won’t get any hipster points, though! 🙂
I think the towel issue is the only thing I’m hesitant about with the crazy line-drying contraption on Amazon. I remember towels and jeans always came out crunch-ified when my mom line-dried those things when I was a kid. I’ll have to do some research to see if there’s a way to stop that from happening. Science!
We are big fans of the sniff test for pants/sweaters/etc. Our little person generates more laundry than the big people, though…she easily goes through a couple of changes of clothes a day and it’s difficult to get her to put on clothes that she’s already worn, even pajamas.
We do buy a bunch of generics for fabric sheets, fabric softener and even detergent, and they work just fine.
Oh wow, I can imagine! That is a lot of clothes, even if it’s just a wee one making them all.
Agreed with the generic laundry products – they might not make your laundry smell like a freshness bomb, but they’ll get the job done.
Good article, Lindsay. Wish I had some words of wisdom to add, but I really don’t with the exception of bringing your laundry to a family member’s house when visiting and get it done there (wink, wink). I had my first washer and dryer delivered on the day I moved into my first (rental) house that had hook-ups. It was one of the most exciting days of my life! We used a laundromat this past summer while on an extended vacation and were shocked by how much money the machines require. Thank goodness, we had thought to bring along our own detergent and dryer sheets so we didn’t have to purchase those at the laundromat, too.
Ha! After I moved out on my own, I was that same way with the first house I rented with a real flush toilet (it was Alaska, after all….).
And yes, laundromats really are expensive…it makes me sick to see so much money being flushed down the drain (literally) each week.
I have fond memories of going to the laundromat with my mom but those were really different days.
Luckily (?) JuggerBaby doesn’t mind running around all day in perfectly filthy clothes after playing in water, painting, eating, and napping at daycare so we can still do just one or two changes of clothes per day. Tiny clothes DO take up less room! I do a multiple-wears-rule, tough stuff like jeans can be worn 3-5 times before washing, more fragile things get worn twice. But I don’t have much fragile stuff anymore.
We went to wool dryer balls about two years ago and they work great! We still have half a pack of dryer sheets, and I used to cut them into thirds as well, so they lasted forever.
I won’t make my own detergent (with our space issue and accident/bad decisionmaking-prone child it’s not worth it!) but we use maybe 20% of the recommended amount per load, supplementing with a bit of white vinegar as needed, and that works perfectly fine.
I tried wool dryer balls too in an attempt to get the dryers to actually dry things, but alas; it didn’t work! I haven’t thought about cutting dryer sheets up, though. I’ll have to try that next to see if it still cuts down on static enough… thanks for the tip!
It’s a shame your apartment doesn’t have a washer/dryer combo in the unit. Ugh. If it would save you money, I say buy it. You also have to consider the hassle and time spent lugging your laundry to the machines. Your time is worth something too. And, when you no longer need it anymore, you can sell it and recoup most of the expense!
That’s true – I hadn’t been thinking about the time it takes to lug the laundry around. If it’s still working when we don’t need it anymore, I suppose I could sell it – probably to someone here at this complex! lol
I am confused now. Wearing anything except underwear/socks multiple times is not a normal thing? I thought that it is how it should be. I mean I did this all my life. And learnt it from my parents. Something needs washing when it gets dirty not when it was used. Also never had a drier, we always hanging the clothes to dry (we have two similar folding racks you linked). How big is your apartment, even a slim model would not fit into a corner?
Haha, not all of us were taught that from our parents! We used to make MOUNTAINS of laundry. I’d heard as a kid that some people wore their clothes more than once, but literally everyone around me thought that was dirty and gross.
It wasn’t until I was able to form my own ideas and opinions about things as an adult that I saw it’s not gross, it’s perfectly fine and saves a ton of money (and not to mention the environment…).
I love your tip about wearing outerclothes – we do a similar thing and it really cuts down on the amount of clothes we need.
Thank goodness it’s the norm to have laundry in your house here! My husband is huge and has a physical job and plays sports. Yeeeeeah. We don’t have a dryer – good for the environment and our wallet (but dang, in winter sometimes I wish we did)
Haha, my husband is 6’4″ and used to play sports too! He played hockey and would come home with mountains of laundry all drenched in sweat…eew. Most places do have laundry in-house here, except for small apartments like ours. It’s pretty uncommon to find an actual house without laundry.
Have you tried cutting those generic laundry sheets in half, or using a full-sized one more than once? I remember reading about a woman who swiped other people’s laundry sheets out of the trash and reused them. We don’t use them here, even though Anchorage is pretty dry; it’s probably because we don’t use the dryer, but put our clothes and linens on drying racks instead.
We do tumble the heavy stuff (e.g., towels and jeans) for a few minutes, but then put them on the racks or the outdoor clothesline if it’s not too cold). I lucked out on clothes racks, paying $5 and $4 at a thrift store and yard sale, respectively; my partner had one of his own when I moved in, too. We also hang shirts on plastic hangers vs. the racks.
So here’s my frugal-hack suggestion:
Wash two or three loads all at once (hard to get three or even two washers sometimes, I know)
Throw them by turns into the same dryer, paying once
Take them out after five or 10 minutes
Cart them upstairs and hang ’em on racks and hangers
That way you pay for one dryer load only.
Agreed on the judicious re-wearing, too. Try hanging a shirt outside for a few minutes or, yeah, washing just the underarms and hanging it up to dry. Although I grew up using towels only once, I know let them go for a week without a wash.
As far as washing denim after one wear, I’ll just leave this here:
http://donnafreedman.com/how-often-do-you-wash-your-jeans/
Donna, thank you!
We actually just bought a clothes rack not too long ago to air-dry our clothes, but my husband is sort of against it since it doesn’t leave his jeans and towels fluffy and soft. But with your tip above – paying for one load and rotating them out – we can still have the best of both worlds. Great idea!
Just a few minutes should tumble the stiffness outta the denim and terrycloth. We hang all our stuff on racks or the clothesline and never use fabric softener.
I’ve heard a lot of people suggest adding some white vinegar to the rinse cycle in lieu of softener. They swear that the odor goes away.