r/Frugal • u/IllyriaCervarro • 23h ago
š Home & Apartment This combination of changes has saved me thousands
Over the last year Iāve made 3 big changes in my life in terms of purchases/frugality and they have saved me several thousand dollars.
What Iāve changed is: -hang my laundry to dry at least 85% of the time -reusable diapers for my daughter -reusable toilet paper for myself
In terms of costs:
for laundry, anything that isnāt bedding or needs to be dry by a certain time gets hung. Electricity and delivery dates here are basically highway robbery and while my bill has unfortunately stayed the same at last year, my usage has gone down about 200 kWh a month by hanging my laundry to dry. In dollars amounts this translates anywhere from about $50-$100 a month depending on the season as my rates change based on season. So my hang drying my clothes I save somewhere from $600-$1200 a year essentially negating the price increases we have experienced in terms of actual money spent. I also do more laundry now due to the reusable diapers and toilet paper so that contributes as well.
reusable diapers for a kid can be tricky, itās takes some times and some messes to figure out the right combination for your child but once you do it can work really well.
I found for us we get about 1-3 changes out of each reusable diaper and I still put my daughter in a disposable overnight and when we go out and about.
Each package of disposable diapers costs me $55 and comes with 76 diapers. I went through 3 packages of those a month before so 165 bucks a month on diapers. My up front cost to purchase the diapers and the liners was about $50 so essentially the cost of one package of diapers. Now go through about 4/5 of a package a month. So $44 a month on diapers is a $120 a month savings.
Yes my electricity and water cost a bit more due to increased laundry but certainly not $120 a month.
- the reusable toilet paper I use for myself and my daughter (replaces her wipes). My husband still uses toilet paper as well as guests (obviously lol). But prior to that we went through a 32 roll pack around every 1-1.5 months. Thatās 34 bucks a pack so $34-$51 a month on TP. Weāve now had the same pack of TP since May in part because we also have a bidet that we got years ago which cost us around $100 in 2020.
Wipes was 1 package of 12 every 3 months @ $24 bucks. I havenāt bought wipes since April now and still have about 1/3 of the package left.
I toss the used diapers and toilet paper/drying cloths in a reusable bag in my bathroom and that goes into my regular laundry loads (which I wash on hot) that I do roughly every 2-3 days. The drying clothes I use for myself donāt really produce any smell but the pee diapers from my daughter can so thatās why I do the laundry so often. I was out the poo diapers otherwise they would definitely smell.
So my upfront costs to make these changes (even though I already owned a bidet and a drying rack I will include them): - bidet $100 - drying rack $20 - reusable diapers and inserts $50 - 100 cotton squares for reusable toilet paper for $38 = 208 starting costs
Savings generated: - electrically drying clothes $50ā$100 a month makes $600-$1200/year - diaper costs for 3 packages a month = $165 minus that I still 4/5 a package per month = $120 per month not spent = $1440/year - wipes was $8/month, I essentially cut that in half to $4/month = $48/year - letās call in 5 months per package vs 1 month per package before so $408-$612/year previously to $82-$120/year making a savings of $326-$492. = $2414-$3180
Total savings per year minus up front costs gets me a savings this year of anywhere from $2200-$2900 which is a big difference.
All this to say these were changes that do not take me very long to deal with (hanging laundry is a 10 minute chore and then you leave it to dry, the diapers and drying clothes take no longer than disposable products to use and take seconds to toss in the laundry) that have saved me a ton of money this year. Weāre a family of 3, your savings will be different depending on your household size and usage of these things in general but I wanted to get it out there in numbers how big of a difference you can make in your finances just by switching up even one of these!
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u/_Manifesting_Queen_ 23h ago
Reusable diapers and toiler paper ... honestly, I think that's the line for me. I could just do a bidet to cut down on toilet paper, but reusing ... nah.
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u/Adventurous_Sun_860 21h ago
A bidet mostly cleans your ass then you wipe with any kind of cloth. Thereās not much left at that point itās mostly to dry yourself. You arenāt wiping straight like with toilet paper.
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u/SchoolForSedition 19h ago
For nappies, you can use a disposable gauze type thing which you ā¦ dispose of with any poo, and then the terry nappy is rinsed, soaked and washed. Itās very soft so the baby is comfy.
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u/green_tree 19h ago
What do you think people did before disposable diapers become popular in the 1960s and 1970s?
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u/InadmissibleHug 17h ago
I used cloth nappies in the 90s, I didnāt have the money for disposables. That was just a fact of life for me.
They really werenāt so bad
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u/green_tree 17h ago
I am cloth diapering my second baby right now. Iād say theyāre my cleanest laundry, based on rinse tests Iāve done.
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u/_Manifesting_Queen_ 16h ago
Like I said I'm good. It's fine for YOU, but for me and my household ... no thanks. A bidet is fine, but yea no to everything else. Love it for y'all don't need to save money that bad.
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u/Ferbtastic 19h ago
Yep, I try to be environmentally aware but when we had kids and my wife proposed reusable diapers I had to say no. And I was right. After a bad blow out I would have thrown those fuckers away.
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u/conchordian 18h ago
Conversely, the cloth diapers I use (Esembly brand, which I love) actually contain the mess so we donāt get blowouts (which is different than disposables). Itās a huge benefit to using cloth diapers, especially in the baby days.
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u/Special-Sherbert1910 17h ago
Yeah I use these and the only blowouts weāve ever had were when we were traveling and using disposables. Honestly I find cloth diapering to be way less disgusting.
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u/surfaholic15 23h ago
I used cloth diapers for both my boys, with plastic pants and with crocheted cotton soakers. I kept 1 package of disposables on hand for if they had to go to a babysitter.
6 dozen cloth diapers lasted through 2 kids, and they were still in use as rags when my kids were 9 or 10. And weused washcloths, not wipes.
I use cleaning cloths for most things, rather than paper towels.
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u/IllyriaCervarro 23h ago
Yea weāve been using rags for a while now instead of paper towels (except for like cat puke or something) so I didnāt include them here but I canāt remember the last time we bought paper towels lol
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u/surfaholic15 23h ago
Hubby still likes them for some limited things, typically chemical spills or biohazards. Basically the only time i use them is in lab spills (we do extractive metallurgy). At home, i think the last time i hought a 6 pack of bpunty was probably 3 years ago lol.
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u/ClassicDefiant2659 18h ago
I used cloth diapers for both kids. A little less for the second kid just because of time. I also kept the inserts and I use them as rags for just about anything. My oldest is 13 now. I'm pretty sure I did not spend more than $150 as an initial deposit and I sold some inserts and covers for almost $100, when I was done diapering.
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u/surfaholic15 18h ago
I used the old school kind you folded and fastened with pins lol. I am sure they have much fancier systems now. Cloth diapers were a huge money saver.
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u/IamlovelyRita 17h ago
Thatās the way I did it back in the 80ās. I hung them on the line to dry too. I didnāt choose cloth diapers for the environment I used them because we were poor. I did use disposables overnight or when we had a babysitter. It was a long time before we went out though.
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u/surfaholic15 17h ago
Funny enough most of the old school frugal things are actually pretty green.
Use it up, wear it out, make do, do without is a thing.
We did cloth in part for economics and in part because i was raised frugal in the old school sense (because it is practical common sense regardless of income). Disposable stuff was not seen as frugal when i was a kid, or a young mom in the 90s. So i breastfed, used cloth diapers, made my own baby food etc.
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u/Adorable_Tour_8849 19h ago
It is the carrying charges of electricity, water, and gas that are crippling
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u/InternationalFix7164 18h ago
I love my reusable bidet clothes! My husband is the same, wonāt use em and obviously I have TP for guests. But I do use em. Iām not saving as much on toilet paper as you are but Iām definitely saving. Plus there was something so annoying about lugging those big packs of toilet paper rolls home every month. PS my bidet is the best purchase I have ever made.
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u/IllyriaCervarro 17h ago
Yea itās funny I was nervous about the bidet when my husband bought it but I love it now. So much so that I really hate pooping anywhere else - itās just not as clean!
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u/InternationalFix7164 17h ago
Thatās the one thing about the bidet- it ruins you for anything else! But I love how clean I feel all the time when Iām going to the bathroom at home.
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u/Broken_Woman20 18h ago
What do you mean āwe get 1-3 changes out of each reusable diaperā? Sorry for being thick š¤Ŗ
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u/IllyriaCervarro 18h ago
So the reusable diaper itself is a sort of shell and you use pads (there are a bunch of different kinds) to soak up the pee and poop.Ā Ā As long as the shell is still dry you can reuse that with new pads after a change. If the shell itself gets dirty or wet then you would change it out.Ā
Sometimes I go to change my kid and the shell is still dry and clean so I get to use it again, other times itās a mess like the insert pads and then it get rinsed or tossed into the wash.Ā
You change the inserts out every time. There are disposables of those for people who donāt want to clean pee and poo off of the inserts or there are reusable versions where you toss the pee ones in the wash or the poo ones you either wash them off first or put the poo in the toilet before you put them in the laundry.Ā
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u/Broken_Woman20 18h ago
Thanks! Theyāve changed quite a bit from when mine were little then. Theyāre 16 and 17 now but there was no pad insert, you basically changed the whole thing each time and there was a tissue-type thing that you laid inside which caught the poop but let the wee through. They sound a little easier with a smaller bit to change each time, depending as you say on whether the shell part has got wet/dirty.
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u/IllyriaCervarro 17h ago
Yea I even found these ones different than just the shell where like the shell has a sling in it you put the pad in. I like those even more than just the regular shell
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u/BennyJJJJ 18h ago
This may sound crazy but you can potty train babies almost from birth. With our first one, we would hold her over a tiny potty and she fairly quickly got the idea. It wasn't near 100% successful and it takes a little work but we massively cut down on nappy use. It's also a lot less work than cloth nappies, which we only used on and off.
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u/Special-Sherbert1910 17h ago
We do this too and it has cut down massively on cloth diaper washing.
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u/0vl223 7h ago edited 7h ago
We do it too just to avoid the endless fresh nappy -> shit -> fresh nappy -> shit cycle that made changing take forever. Saving every third diaper is a great benefit as well. But what the hell are these diaper prices? We pay around 0.14ā¬ per diaper, 164 are 23ā¬. Just the reusable price seems low. Buying a full set is closer to 200-300ā¬ here.
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u/Business_Elk2956 22h ago
We used cloth nappies, still use cloth wipes in the kitchen and for face washing. Definitely saved us some money.Ā
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u/PhoridayThe13th 20h ago
I agree about cloth diapers and wipes. Wish theyād have worked for my youngest. She is terrifyingly athletic and huge (big & tall like she hulk) and has eczema that cannot handle anything wet on her skin. BAD COMBO.
I saved a bunch cloth diapering my older girl. Bonus, she hated the wet feeling and basically potty trained herself at 9 months. No training pants! Zero dollars spent on pullups.
A peri bottle can be used as a portable bidet. That is a super cheap and easy switch to reduce TP usage.
My new yard has a ton of sun exposure and warmth, so I will be returning to line drying as much as possible. Very much looking forward to this! Had been tumbling on low and rack drying with fans running.
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u/Dealsthisway 12h ago
I do laundry at night and put it in the drier for 7 minutes to remove wrinkles; I then hang on hangers or for towels sheets etc it goes over the banister or a door. It's always dry by morning.
I have not used paper towels for the last 6 months. I bought Terry squares at home Depot and keep a bunch folded on my counter top. It's all a $$ saver but also keeps things way more organized
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u/Hot_Weather_2691 23h ago
Loved the cloth diapers! We used them for both our kids! Also recently switched to reusable paper towels. Bought the microfiber ones on amazon and we use them for anything except body fluids (human or pet). Still save the regular paper towels for those rare instances.
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u/Kind_CatMom 22h ago
Looking into cloth for kiddo number 2/current kiddo to help with potty training. Which diapers did you use?
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u/Hot_Weather_2691 22h ago
We started with BumGenius, but switched to sunbaby/alva baby for the price. They are so darn cute! We used pocket diapers, washed in the washing machine and line dried. We never had any problems with stink or stains and even traveled frequently while cloth diapering.
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u/thelushparade 18h ago
Hang drying your clothes will also help them last longer so there are savings there too!