Frugal Fridays: Soap savings
Sorry for the delay in getting this posted - I couldn't log onto the internet last night or this morning. Since it was posted so late, feel free to add your frugal post anytime today or Saturday or Sunday. We'll just make it a "Frugal Weekend." :)
I'll be back to more regular posting early next week. If you are in the mood for a good discussion or want to give some parenting advice or great Fall recipes, be sure to check out some of the questions and discussion on this post. Have a lovely weekend!
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For us, living frugally has meant cutting expensive items out of our budget and trying to cut costs in everyday necessity items.
For us, one of those everyday necessities is liquid hand soap. I've found it is much easier to clean up soap from a dispenser at the sink than to deal with bar soap and the resulting soap scum mess. Most liquid soap is not only much more costly, it disappears much more quickly. However, I didn't let that dissuade me from considering saving us the soap scum goop all over the sink. Instead, I came up with some creative ways to buy liquid soap inexpensively, and to stretch it to last much longer than it's normal "sink life."
1. Buy off-brand dish detergent/liquid soap in full size containers. I rarely buy liquid soap in dispensers. More than likely to do so is to just to pay extra for a fancy dispenser. It's better to just buy dispensers once and then buy soap in bulk and refill them again and again. Every once in awhile, I can get soap dispensers with soap on sale with coupons for about $0.30/each. When I do that, I'll buy them, but usually I've also found it is much less expensive to buy liquid soap in larger containers. I normally buy dish detergent/liquid soap from Aldi for $0.99/each. This can last us for at least a few months or more, if carefully used and stretched in the below ways.
2. Water down the soap. Not only do I buy the liquid soap in larger containers, I always water down the soap before I put it in the containers. I usually do about half water/half soap. This stretches it quite a bit more.
3. Use foaming pumps. This will stretch your soap at least by 50% more. We just got foaming pumps in the last few months and I have been amazed at the difference it makes.
While on the subject of soap, I thought I'd throw in that (from my estimation) you will save a lot of money in water costs, energy costs, and soap costs by washing your dishes by hand. I know this is not feasible for everyone, but just comparing the costs of dishwasher detergent and liquid detergent used for washing dishes by hand might surprise you! Speaking of detergent, never use the suggested amount of laundry detergent. You can usually cut it in half and not notice any difference.
I know these all might seem like little things, but cutting lots of corners like this will quickly add up to reduce your expenditures. A dollar here and a dollar there really does make a difference. So, when trying to trim down your spending, don’t overlook the little things.
I'd love to hear your thoughts or ideas on soap as well. What works for you?
If you'd like to join in our Frugal Friday, just post something on frugality, link to this post, and leave your link below. Any questions? Email me or check this post for more information.
I'll be back to more regular posting early next week. If you are in the mood for a good discussion or want to give some parenting advice or great Fall recipes, be sure to check out some of the questions and discussion on this post. Have a lovely weekend!
----------------------------------------
For us, living frugally has meant cutting expensive items out of our budget and trying to cut costs in everyday necessity items.
For us, one of those everyday necessities is liquid hand soap. I've found it is much easier to clean up soap from a dispenser at the sink than to deal with bar soap and the resulting soap scum mess. Most liquid soap is not only much more costly, it disappears much more quickly. However, I didn't let that dissuade me from considering saving us the soap scum goop all over the sink. Instead, I came up with some creative ways to buy liquid soap inexpensively, and to stretch it to last much longer than it's normal "sink life."
1. Buy off-brand dish detergent/liquid soap in full size containers. I rarely buy liquid soap in dispensers. More than likely to do so is to just to pay extra for a fancy dispenser. It's better to just buy dispensers once and then buy soap in bulk and refill them again and again. Every once in awhile, I can get soap dispensers with soap on sale with coupons for about $0.30/each. When I do that, I'll buy them, but usually I've also found it is much less expensive to buy liquid soap in larger containers. I normally buy dish detergent/liquid soap from Aldi for $0.99/each. This can last us for at least a few months or more, if carefully used and stretched in the below ways.
2. Water down the soap. Not only do I buy the liquid soap in larger containers, I always water down the soap before I put it in the containers. I usually do about half water/half soap. This stretches it quite a bit more.
3. Use foaming pumps. This will stretch your soap at least by 50% more. We just got foaming pumps in the last few months and I have been amazed at the difference it makes.
While on the subject of soap, I thought I'd throw in that (from my estimation) you will save a lot of money in water costs, energy costs, and soap costs by washing your dishes by hand. I know this is not feasible for everyone, but just comparing the costs of dishwasher detergent and liquid detergent used for washing dishes by hand might surprise you! Speaking of detergent, never use the suggested amount of laundry detergent. You can usually cut it in half and not notice any difference.
I know these all might seem like little things, but cutting lots of corners like this will quickly add up to reduce your expenditures. A dollar here and a dollar there really does make a difference. So, when trying to trim down your spending, don’t overlook the little things.
I'd love to hear your thoughts or ideas on soap as well. What works for you?
If you'd like to join in our Frugal Friday, just post something on frugality, link to this post, and leave your link below. Any questions? Email me or check this post for more information.
posted by Crystal Paine at 12:04 PM
18 Comments:
Thanks for this Crystal! I've really enjoyed reading everyone's tips!
We use Melaleuca soap products because they don't cause any allergic reactions with us. But, I so agree with all of your tips. They have a foaming childrens soap that I even dilute down and it works fine. Also, my 4 and 5 year olds do not use near as much soap with the foaming soap pump. We also save by not using near as much laundry soap as called for, plus ours is super concentrated and now with a new front loader washer I will probably only be using a tablespoon per load. I do alot of dishes by hand but still use our dishwasher. I pack it extremely well and most of the time it is only run every other day.
It seems to me like when I buy off-brand liquid, I have to use more of it for washing dishes. For hand washing I think you can get by with a lot less, but for dishes I feel like I need some suds, and I was using twice as much with the cheaper stuff. I usually use Palmolive, and even dawn and Joy don't seem like they work as well. Do you ever notice this Crystal?
Thanks Crystal! We love Frugal Fridays!
Thank you for the soap tips. I would like to try the foaming soap. I have seen it at the hospital
I have tip for shopping.
I try to do grocery shopping in large trips I used to shop every week but now try to shop every two weeks. I have cut as much as $50 to $75 off my bill.
I wrote an article about my Home Hair Coloring advice, can you tell I hard time thinking of something "original".
-Lela
I would love to see the onion soup mix recipe but it wouldn't work. =(
~Jaclynn
According to consumer reports, you use less water with a dishwasher than with handwashing. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/appliances/dishwashers/reports/less-work-less-water/index.htm
Please note that I hate, hate, hate dishwashing and will cling to any possible excuse to use a dishwasher:)
Good soap tips... I never thought of using dishwashing liquid for hand soap (although I wash my hands with it in the kitchen all the time!).
I, too, love foaming soaps, especially with my five-year-old who loooooves soap. I'm thrilled to see that my favorite company, Method, has come out with foaming versions, rather than just their regular liquid hand soap.
Jeana, you might try their dish liquid as well. I used to use lemon Joy but much prefer the Method pink grapefruit liquid. You can pick it up inexpensively at Target or their site, www.methodhome.com -- hope that helps!
My husband likes using bar soap better than liquid soap and i found sad for me that liquid soap is usually too hard on my hands I wash my hands alot! So what we do is cut each bar in half or sometime sin 1/4's It helps to make the bar less bulky and although there is still the soap scum all over the sink it is is less.
After nine years of marriage, and saving pennies by washing out ziploc bags, I realized that the fine print on the laundry detergent bottle itself instructs you to find an almost invisible mark half way down the lid for regular loads!
Do you use regular hand soap/dish soap for the foaming pumps? I had one, but it said it needed a special refill that was very expensive. That would be good news indeed. I was thinking just this morning about how fast the soap was dissappearing in the bathroom. My three year old loves to wash her hands.
Thanks again for the great tips. I intend to use them immediately.
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http://www.squidoo.com/recycled_yarn/
Since I am at home now with the baby. We purchase any soap on sale and try to use a Manufacturers coupon as well. Most items we purchase are on sale. I try to use as many Manufacturer coupons as I can. I also have been making my DH breakfast before he goes to work and he has been brown bagging it too.
You are all so very enabling me!! ThankS!
Make your own "foaming hand soap" by watering down regular liquid hand soap and re-using your foaming bottle. That's what we do, and like Crystal says... it lasts forever! :D
I'm late with the "Frugal Friday" comment, but Friday was just not the day to spend time on the computer around here! Now for my tip: my family LOVES tacos and can eat quite a lot of them-especially my 16 year old firefighter son! Tacos become an expensive meal when you have to prepare two pounds or more of the seasoned ground beef to have enough to fill everyone up! I have found that I can "extend" the ground beef mixture by adding a cup or more of cooked lentils to the ground beef and seasonings. Even though my family is not big on lentils, they don't mind them in the taco meat a bit! Since I started doing this, I can fill everyone up with only 1 pound of hamburger meat!
The other thing we do in our house is use cheap family shampoo to fill our soap pump packs. It's basically the same ingredients without the strong scents. At $1-2 vs $5 it's a lot more economical for us.
Thank you for the frugal tips! With a family of 7 (six still at home) every little bit helps!
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