As you streamline your home to become more eco-friendly, don’t forget to look at how you can begin making your laundry room energy efficient as well. For many families the daily and weekly laundry duties can really suck their energy and budget. By making a few small changes, you can not only avoid harsh chemicals, but create a better and more energy efficient method of handling this chore.
How to Make Your Laundry Room Energy Efficient
Make your own homemade laundry detergent, fabric softener and stain remover. Using simple ingredients like Borax and Dr. Bronner’s soap, you can create all natural cost effective laundry products. These items will not only save you money in your household budget but they will give you an alternative to the chemical laden products on store shelves.
Line dry your clothing. This traditional method of drying clothing has been handed down generation after generation. Not only can you set up a line in our backyard like our grandmas use to do, you can easily create an indoor line for drying clothing. While it can leave your clothing a bit stiffer than a dryer with fabric softener would, it is so much more cost effective you likely won’t mind at all.
Use the proper wash and dry setting. Make sure you are using the right setting for the load you are washing. That also means that you should make sure to set your dryer setting so it only runs as long as is necessary. Start with the lowest setting and increase as needed. Just make sure to listen and check.
Set timers so clothing doesn’t sit and have to be rewashed. Just as mentioned in the suggestion above, making sure you pay attention to when clothing needs to be swapped is really important. Leaving your wet clothes in the washer or damp clothing in the dryer will end up with you having to rewash those clothing. Washing multiple times leads to unnecessary expenses and is far from being eco-friendly.
Don’t overfill your washing machine. Putting too many items into your washing machine at once is a big problem. Not only do you create wear and tear on your machine, you are also not allowing proper space for you clothing to move around and wash properly. Make sure to not over load your washer or dryer.
Making your laundry room energy efficient is really all about using common sense. A few simple things can make a world of difference in how much energy you are using to accomplish this chore, as well as create huge savings in your household budget.
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