Save Money While Cleaning Up

In my experience, the job title "Stay at Home Mom" is synonymous with "Cleaner of All Things Dirty."  One way I have learned to "earn" money by saving money is by cutting back on my paper towel usage.

It is easy to whip through several rolls per week without even thinking about it.  Is this mindless wiping?  In search of MY most favorite paper towel, I would have to say the quicker-picker-upper Bounty wins.  One does lasts through several wipes and you can rinse it out and use it again.  I couldn't believe how sturdy this paper towel was! You simply save money by not using as many.  I like to use the select your size type so you can use the smaller ones for little messes.

Which leads to an additional way to save money and "earn" yourself a little extra cash:  use cloth napkins and kitchen towels instead of paper towels. I try not to use paper towels unless it is obviously something that needs to go straight in the trash cash or will completely ruin my kitchen towels.

Let's start with the cloth napkins.  There are several ways to save on these if you don't already have some.  You can buy them from a consignment store or garage sale, buy them in bulk, or make your own all you crafty ladies.  If there are several people in your family, you can do something so everyone can tell them a part and use them more than once if possible.  I've tried several ways and all of them work great:  have a different colored napkin for each person, or a different napkin ring for each person, or have each person keep their napkin at their usual seat at the table, or have the names put on them. You can get white ones and have the family decorate their own with Sharpies!  At Linen Table Cloth, you can buy napkins in sets of twelve for as low as $6.69 for a dozen.  I've also purchased mine at Target  and Home Goods when they are on clearance.  BTW: I never iron mine!  What's the point?

Use your kitchen towels for everything else until you drive them into the ground! By far, my most favorite type of kitchen towel is the flour sack.  It is big, absorbent, sturdy, inexpensive, and I can bleach them.  I have about 2 dozen and use them to pick up spills, dry hands, as place mats for the kids, for washing and drying dishes, and cleaning off counter tops and out refrigerators---just about anything I would use a paper towel for.  I purchased mine on clearance at Target about two years ago and they are still ticking!  I also just found a set of a dozen for $16.99 at Amazon and they come with free shipping for a purchase of $25, so it is a good deal if you buy two sets.  (I have not tried this specific brand, but it has a  4 1/2 star rating).

Once you wade all through that, here is your total yearly savings on papers towels:
A bulk roll of 12 costs on average (without tax) $14, so each roll costs $1.17.  So, if I cut back and only use 1 roll per month instead of 10, I would save approximately $140.40 per year!

Start Saving Now!

Once the din settled down in my head, I pulled out a piece of paper and pen.  I knew that I had to take a hard look at our monthly spending with Superman x-ray vision.  I remembered enough about fixed costs, variable costs and mixed costs from high school economics class to know that much of our spending was variable.  But I also knew that I also had control over mixed costs.

How about a little economics 101?  A fixed cost is one that you cannot change, like your mortgage or a car payment.  Examples of variable costs are ones you can change such as food, entertainment and clothing spending.  Mixed costs are just that---a cost that you have to pay but you have some control over:  electricity and water bills.  You have to pay those bills to keep the lights on and the water running but you can turn off the lights and fix leaks to help with the costs.  More on those later.

I started with our variable costs and discovered that there was a lot of mindless spending.  I didn't get all technical with it:  I just did a quick go through in my head and made an educational guesstimate of the monthly costs.  Here we go:

House Keeper (Stop whining and get out that elbow grease:  $400
Data Plans on iPads (WiFi--need I say more):  $50
Local Coffee Shop (Love their Chi and muffins...hubby loves the iced coffee):  $100
Buying Lunch (It is OK to eat at your desk, honey):  $125
Going Out (had to go!): $200
Clothing and Random Crap I Buy at Target (Although I LOVE Target, snif!):  $300
Exercise Classes (Yoga, Ballet--what's wrong with walking?):  $150
Guitar Lessons for my Son Who Doesn't Practice (He isn't going to be a Rock Star):  $100
Mani/Pedi, Eyebrows, Facial ( that is what a good washcloth, tweezers and pumice are for):  $150
Going to Movies (wait for Netfilx, On Demand or Pay Per View): $100

Total Monthly Mindless Spending:  $1,675 (What??)
Yearly Mindless Spending:  $20,100 (Really?!?!?!)

I know!  I had gotten so used to our lifestyle we'd had over the "fat years" that it never occurred to me how much we were spending on goods and services we didn't need.  Now, of course, there are some trade-offs.  I still have to buy clothes for my growing children, just not as many.  My husband has to each lunch, he just doesn't have to buy it at a restaurant.  I have to use cleaning products to clean my house.  However, those costs pale in comparison to what we were mindlessly spending.

I got rid of all of the above amenities immediately.  Over the months, I came up with other ways to cut cents and dollars that actually add up to a significant savings.  I will share those with you day by day as well as look at some of the above line item costs.

Until then, grab a pen, paper and calculator and make a list of your mindless spending.  It may be less than mine or even more.  Regardless, these are things you can either cut out all together or figure out a way to cut back the cost as much as comfortably possible.  For me, it wasn't a tough decision to make and not really painful to implement:  it is what I had to do.  Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.