I don’t like buying sponges for doing the dishes. They seem high-priced for something you throw away, plus they are notorious playgrounds for bacteria to breed. While you can curb this last problem by washing the sponges in the washing machine or microwaving them, there’s always the risk that when you are cleaning with a sponge you are really spreading more bacteria on your plates and glasses.

But while I have long made scrubbies out of onion bags, I have never come up with a great alternative to the sponge. Then I was reading The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen and came upon this passage:

We recommend you switch away from using cellulose sponges in the kitchen and use cotton dishclothes instead, changing out to a fresh one every couple of days. They don’t add too much to the laundry burden, and they’re a lot more sanitary than sponges. When they become stained and worn, they can be downgraded to cleaning rags. Best yet, it they are all-cotton, you can compost them at the end of their lives.

Good tip. I’m going to try it.

The Internet makes it easier than ever to live by the motto “never pay retail.” Recently, my husband and I needed to buy a range cooktop for our kitchen remodel. After shopping for months, we found one that we liked for $1,000.

I didn’t want to pay that much for a range. It seemed to me that they should be around $600-$700. I’m not sure where I got that number, but it seemed like a good round number and that is what I budgeted for. Unfortunately, the manufacturers didn’t agree–in fact, ranges had been going up in price. In the months we have been looking, they have risen an average of about $200 per unit, so it seemed that I was going to have to cave in and pay the $1000.

I decided, though, that since we were buying the range from a national hardware store, I would at least try to find a coupon to see if I could save 10-25% first. So I went home and got on the Internet.

And while I wasn’t able to find a coupon, through a variety of searches, I found a store on the East Cost that carried the same range for $300 less than anyone else–and they were willing to send it to me for free. On top of that, I found a factory rebate from the manufacturer for $20 off that model.

So in less than an hour of searching, I saved $320, bringing the price of the range down to $680. If we sell the existing range for the $100-$150 price range I’m hoping for, I will have cut the price of the new range almost in half.

That’s a lot of money for one hour of work.

How has the Internet helped you save money?

Sooner or later, the Internet comes up with a solution for everything. Enter Coin Jar Calculator, a website that estimates how much the money in your coin jar is worth.

Since different coins have set weights–$10 in quarters weigh half a pound, $4.50 in nickels comes out to a pound, etc.–the site has you weigh different handfuls of coin, compares that to the overall weight of the jar, and comes up with an estimate for you of how much money is likely to be in there.

I don’t know how accurate Coin Jar Calculator is, but it certainly looks easier than counting all those coins. [Lifehacker]

Last week, I wore out the the drum unit on my printer. Which is a way of saying, I print a lot. In fact, printing is one of the biggest costs of my home office, and as such, I’ve learned some tricks to cut down and save money as best I can.

And for good reason, too. Inkjet ink is one of the most expensive fluids on earth. No, really. Look at this graph comparing it to other liquids:

[ReflectionOf.Me]

So, the number one way to save on printing is to get a laser printer. The toner for a laser printer will often cost less per page than inkjet ink, especially if you use the extended cartridge. For example, the high-yield black toner for my printer prints 5,000 pages per $65 cartridge, which equals $.013 per page. The similar inkjet ink yields 200 pages per $14 cartridge, which is $.07 per page. Therefore, the inkjet ink costs 5 times more than the toner cartridge.

Another tip is to get your cartridges refilled, which means you are only paying for the ink instead of a new cartridge and packaging. You don’t have to do this yourself–many stores will refill your cartridge for you.

Here are 5 Other Ways To Save Money On Printing:

1. “Print” To PDF: If you can, go paperless. Much of my research is printed to .PDF, which means that I save the document as a .PDF on my computer. That way I have a personal copy that I can refer to, but it’s not on paper. This kind of “printing” is free.

2. Print In Draft Mode: Most printers have a draft mode that print a lighter version of the document for you. Using this mode can extend the life of your cartridge, sometimes almost doubling it.

3. Print On Both Sides: Many printers have a duplexing option that allows you to print on both sides of the page. You can also duplex manually by turning each page around (or just reusing old paper), but I hear that it can damage some printers, so look into it before you do it.

4. Copy And Paste Before Printing: If you are printing from the internet, copy and paste the information into a document and spend some time deleting unnecessary graphics, ads, and extra pages at the end. You will be amazed how much the document will shrink.

5. Play With Fonts: Finally, don’t be afraid to change the font style or size. For example, I have a 489-page document that I regularly print in Times New Roman size 12 font. When I knock that down to size 11, the document drops to 420 pages, saving me 69 pages of printing–although it is harder to read. Likewise, changing the font itself can make a difference. That same 489-page document balloons up to 598 pages when I use 12-point Verdana and shrinks to 441 pages when I use 12-point Arial Narrow. So experiment.

A note of caution on this last point–there are document standards that you should respect in professional or academic situations. It’s not a good idea to print a resume using 10-point comic sans font if you want to avoid looking a little nutty. Play around with fonts and sizes only when printing for your own purposes and save the fully toned, properly formatted printing for when you need to show the document to someone else.

How do you save money on printing?

Most of us know that when you choose convenience in the grocery story–the food that has been sliced, diced, and pre-prepared for you–you pay for the privilege, but a recent article in ShopSmart, a magazine put out by ConsumerReports, demonstrated just how much.

The magazine sent their staffers to grocery stores in New York to compare the prices of “convenience” groceries such as pre-sliced apples or crumbled cheese to their whole counterparts. They found that sometimes you are paying a whopping 60% more for products that have been precut for you. Here’s the breakdown of what they found:

Baby carrots cost 63% more than whole carrots, at $3.99/lb. vs $1.49/lb. Since most baby carrots are whole carrots that have been sculpted down, that’s a pretty big savings. Switch to carrot sticks?

Broccoli florets cost 63% more than whole broccoli, at $3.99/lb vs. $1.49/lb. It takes approximately 30 seconds to cut a whole broccoli into florets.

Crumbled feta cheese costs 63% more than whole feta cheese, at $8.65/8 oz. vs. $3.23/8 oz. I didn’t know this one, but I did know that crumbled cheese molds faster than whole cheese.

Sliced granny smith apples cost 50% more than whole apples, at $3.97/lb. vs. $1.99/lb. Like the broccoli, that’s a lot to pay for a few minutes of work.

Ground beef patties cost 33% more than regular ground meat, at $5.99/lb. vs. $3.99/lb. You still have to handle the meat either way, right?

Cut-up chicken costs 25% more than whole chicken, at $1.99/lb vs. $1.49/lb. I can understand not wanting to cut up a whole chicken, but if you eat a lot of it, that’s a savings that’s hard to ignore.

The moral here? It sounds like you can passively add savings to your shopping cart just by opting for the more labor-intensive product. Convenience costs a lot.

And while we knew that, it’s still nice to see the numbers.

Have you been watching this Extreme Couponing show on TLC? It’s a whole show about people who use coupons to get thousands of dollars in food for a fraction of the price. In a recent episode, a woman paid $6.46 for $680 worth of groceries. That is impressive!

I’ve talked about using coupons to eat for cheap before on here, and while I still think extreme couponing is an impressive skill to have, there are some problems with it. For one thing, the food that you get isn’t very healthy. Coupons tend to be for brand-name food that is loaded with preservatives, fat, sugars, etc., so relying wholly on coupons is not a good way to get a healthy diet. Also, storing all this food is hard. The show depicts people stockpiling toilet paper in their spare shower and shoving boxes of cereal in their closet. It takes a lot of organization and time to make sure you aren’t wasting the food you’re getting. I mean, even mustard expires eventually.

And then there’s the time issue. When you add up the amount of time spent getting the coupons, researching the deals, shopping in different stores, organizing and storing the food–not to mention cooking it–extreme couponing sounds like a full-time job to me. And I wonder if some of the capable ladies that they have on this show would be better off using their time in a different way.

On the other hand, when they are saving 90% of their grocery bill, who can blame them for wanting to coupon?

What do you think of Extreme Couponing?

[Crafter]

Since posting about turning a bar of soap into liquid hand soap, a lot of people have asked me about making your own laundry soap. I have never tried this but I am curious about the subject.

To make your own laundry soap, you use a combination of borax (found in the laundry section), grated bar soap, and something called “washing soda,” otherwise known as sodium carbonate. Arm and Hammer makes it. Here’s what it looks like:

Some people use baking soda instead of washing soda, which is gentler but may not work as well.

The advantages of making your own laundry soap is that it is cheaper. Roughly speaking, store-bought laundry soap costs $.30 a load and homemade costs between $.03-$.05 a load, which is an astounding 85%-90% in savings. And, like most soap making, it can be more efficient because you make large batches and don’t have to replenish your soap supply as often.

Also, as with making your own liquid hand soap, making laundry soap is a way to use up bar soaps. You could use travel soaps, the ends of soap slivers, or any other extra bars of soap you have lying around.

Finally, laundry soap may be more environmentally friendly and have a lower toxicity than the store-bought stuff.

The downside–and this is why I hesitate trying it myself–is that it might not work as well as store-bought laundry soap, especially in high-efficiency washers. I also wonder if it is harder on your clothes in the long run. If that’s the case, making your own soap could be penny wise and pound foolish.

But not having tried it myself, I can’t say for sure. So, for further reading:

* Got No Dough on The ‘Make Your Own Laundry Detergent’ Debate. It talks about the pros and cons of making your own laundry detergent.

* Making Your Own Laundry Detergent: A Detailed Visual Guide at The Simple Dollar. They not only tell you how to make the homemade laundry detergent, they did a test comparing homemade soap to the store-bought version and got very similar results.

* Crafting Green World tells you How To Make Your Own Eco-Friendly Laundry Soap for Three Cents A Load by Crafting A Green World. You can’t beat that price.

* Make Your Own Laundry Soap from Planet Green tells you how to make both liquid and powdered laundry detergent.

* Simple Easy Fast Effective: Jabs Homemade Laundry Detergent. A straightforward recipe and a cost analysis, too.

If you have made your own laundry soap, tell me about it. Is it worth it?

Well, well, you learn something new every day. Apparently, the color of the tabs and ties on loafs of bread mean something. According to Wise Bread, the tags are there to indicate which day of the week the bread is baked. It goes like this:

* Blue: Monday
* Green: Tuesday
* Red: Thursday
* White: Friday
* Yellow: Saturday

The color coding is there as an easy way for grocery stores and supermarkets to tell which are the freshest loaves of bread–and now you can tell too.

“An easy way to remember it, though,” says Wise Bread, “is to simply recall the alphabet. The colors run in alphabetical order, so the earlier they appear in the alphabet, the earlier in the week the bread was baked.”

Sounds like a good rule of thumb to know. [Lifehacker]

I have a confession to make. I don’t like bar soap. It gets dirty and takes a long time to use up, so I usually get fed up with it and throw it in the trash.

Despite this, people seem to like to give me bar soap, which I feel guilty not using. So I have been buying liquid hand soap at $3 a bottle and putting the bar soap in a box with the intention of somehow finding a use for it.

Then it occurred to me that I might be able to convert the bar soap into liquid hand soap. Why didn’t I think of it before? I did some research and found out that it is easy to do. All it takes is melting the soap with water, adding a little vegetable glycerin, and voilà, you have made liquid hand soap.

So I tried it and was thrilled to find that it works great! From one bar of soap, I made close to 2 liters of hand soap, which will last a long time. The only thing I purchased for this project was a $2 bottle of glycerin at my local drug store:

Glycerin is made from plant oils and is commonly used in soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, etc. Since bar soap already has glycerin in it, I tried this experiment both ways, with and without the added glycerin. I found that the below recipe worked fine without the glycerin, except that the soap tended to clump and didn’t have as smooth a texture. It made enough of a difference that I would recommend adding the glycerin, but you can also try the recipe without it, if you wish.

How To Turn A Bar of Soap Into Liquid Hand Soap

Ingredients:

1 c soap flakes
10 c water
1 Tbs glycerin

Equipment:

Cheese grater
A large pot
Measuring cup and spoons
A spatula for stirring
A soap container with a hand pump
A container to hold excess soap
Funnel

Directions:

First, grate the soap. Get out your cheese grater, grab the soap, and get grating. I found this to be surprisingly easy, although the soap particles tend to float in the air as you grate. You can wear a mask to avoid breathing it in. When you’re done, the soap flakes look like grated Parmesan:

One bar of soap yielded a little over 1.5 cups of flakes. The recipe only uses one cup of soap flakes, so I put the remaining soap in a jar for later use.

In a large pot, combine 1 cup soap flakes, 10 cups water, and 1 Tbs glycerin. Turn on medium-low heat and stir until the soap dissolves. This happens fast, about a minute or two.

Let the soap cool completely, then pour into the containers using the funnel. That’s all there is to it!

As I mentioned, this recipe makes a lot of soap, about 6 bottles worth. I put the excess in a large bottle and am storing it under the sink. When I run out, I will simply pull out the big bottle and funnel some more into the smaller bottle.

You can also use this soap as body wash. To make it smell nice, add a drop or two of essential oil to the mix.

As I mentioned, the only thing I bought for this experiment was the glycerin. I reused the bottles and the soap was a gift. (Alternately, I could have saved soap slivers and made the hand soap that way.)

In the end, I used about $.40 worth of glycerin to make the equivalent of 6 bottles of hand soap. That’s a savings $17.60, well worth the half hour of my time it took to make the soap.

UPDATE: I tried this with Dove Sensitive Skin Soap too. If you want to turn a bar of DOVE soap into liquid soap, click here for the recipe.

ETA: The kind of soap you use may be a bit of a wild card, since every soap will have different ingredients in it. I got the best results with a bar of Yardley soap, which did not even need the glycerin to become hand soap. In general, a higher quality soap will probably yield better liquid hand soap.

Dove Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar seems to be more difficult to turn into hand soap, which I would guess has something to do with the “sensitive” formula.

ETA II: I’m happy so many of you are finding this recipe helpful. If you are having trouble, such as thin or watery soap or “snot-like” (?) soap, I encourage you to read through the comments. Lots of people have reported back with their experiences with the recipe. It seems that sometimes letting the soap sit to thicken in the pot or hacking it with a hand blender to loosen it does the trick.

ETA III: For a solution on getting the soap to lather, try a foaming soap dispenser.

Good luck!

Awhile back, I found myself having to take an extra trip to the store more often than I wanted to to buy household items like razors blades and mops. Before I knew it, I was going to stores like Target or the drug store every month and slapping down around $60–that’s $720 a year–for these items.

Not only is that expensive, I found the whole trip annoying and time consuming. So I started examining everything I bought on these trips and began looking for alternatives.

Fast forward to now, and I can say that I very rarely have to take that shopping trip anymore. I have systematically eliminated the things I bought on this trip by switching to alternative options, reducing what I use, or buying in bulk. This saves money, time, and energy.

Here’s a sample of what I used to buy on this trip and how I stopped needing to buy them:

Household Cleaner–I switched to making my own cleaner, which costs about $.25 a bottle instead of $3-$5 a bottle.

Scrubbies and sponges–I switched to rags and onion bag scrubbies, which are free.

Mops refills–I bought a mop with a washable sponge, which can be used repeatedly.

Toilet paper, Laundry Detergent, and Dishwasher soap–I started buying all these in bulk, which is cheaper and means I don’t have to go to the store as often.

Paper towels–I switched to rags, and buy the remaining paper towels in bulk.

Razors–My husband switched to an old-fashioned safety razor, which costs about one-tenth what brands like Gillette want you to pay. He also bought the razor blades in bulk online.

Shaving soap–My husband uses a brush and soap, which lasts much longer than canned shaving soap and costs a fraction of the price.

Shampoo and Conditioner–I reduced the amount of shampoo I use and find that a bottle now lasts me about 5 months, which means I don’t have to buy it as often as I used to.

I still have to go to the store occasionally to buy things like a new toothbrush or make-up, but it is only once or twice a year instead of every month. It’s one less annoying chore I have to do, and it saves me money too.

How has frugal living reduced your shopping trips?