I have always had a frugal streak in me, though that streak has gotten wider as I’ve gotten older. Luckily, I married someone thrifty as well–that makes life easier!

Anyway, I have always had a ton of little things that I do to save money. Some of them I have laughed at even to myself because they’re such small things.  But of course, those tiny little things add up.  Here are five small things that will gradually save you money.  I’ll post more of them later.

  1. Use less laundry detergent! You really need much less than they tell you–half the recommended amount is usually good. I have always done this, but after I started cloth diapering my daughter, it really brought it all home to me. You really have to use less detergent on diapers than anything else to avoid problems with your diapers.  If half a scoop takes care of poop, then I think it can also handle a little dirt in the rest of the laundry without a problem.
  2. Speaking of which, cloth diapers saved us so much money! It’s not gross or hard, trust me, especially with an infant.
  3. Go a day without makeup.  Or, if you’re like me, go every day without makeup unless you’re going somewhere.  The more you use, the more often you have to buy it.
  4. Sign up for free samples. Not only is it fun to receive free stuff in the mail and try new brands, you save money. Even if it’s just one or two days of free shampoo, those are one or two days that you didn’t pay for.  I have been using a sample of Pantene all week and still have several days to go, and I wash my hair (which is fairly long) every day.
  5. Reduce the number of paper towels you use! This has been a huge savings for us because I was a paper towel addict. We went through a roll every few days, at least.  We dried our hands on them and used them to wipe up messes and clean the mirrors and anything else that needed doing.  One day, my husband and I decided to just stop using so many for a month and see how we did. We were surprised to find that it wasn’t that hard.  We dry our hands on a dish towel and use rags to clean the counters with.  I also cut apart a few old ratty towels to make “unpaper towels” for messes, though we use them for napkins as much as anything else.  I still use them for seriously gross jobs–things I don’t want in my washing machine. (Considering that I do, as mentioned, use cloth diapers, my threshold for gross things I don’t want in the washer is pretty high, though.)  I also use them for any task involving oil, like draining bacon fat or wiping up spills, and I’ll use them for hand drying during particularly nasty illnesses so we’re not sharing too many germs.   Still, we probably don’t use more than a roll per month.  I haven’t bought any since at least August and I still have a huge stack in the closet that should carry us through until spring.  We were buying paper towels nearly every time we went to Walmart before! (And sadly, we were paying full price, too.  The shame!)