Many of us spend a lot of time in our kitchens. It can take a great deal of time to cook for a family every day, and in many houses the kitchen is a place to socialize, to work on homework, to eat, etc. It’s also one of the places in our home where we often inadvertently spend too much money. Most people will read this, and think “yeah, there are a lot of ways to save money on food…” While there are many good tips about how to save on your groceries that’s not the only place where we spend too much money in the kitchen.
Take a look at the following tips to see how you can cut back on your kitchen expenses.
Ditch Those Paper Products
Paper is convenient, but it’s expensive and the cost can add up quickly. Think for a second about all of the paper products that you use in your kitchen. You probably have paper towels, and you might have paper napkins. Paper plates are another popular culprit in some families. This is not to say that these items do not have their time and place, but it is easy to overuse them.
Instead of using paper towels for every spill, you can invest in some washable dish towels. Because they can be washed and reused they are much cheaper in the long run. You can even make your own dish towels out of old bath towels. If you have talent with a sewing machine, you can even make them look nice. You can also buy cloth napkins.
Some nights, paper plates are a lifesaver, but overall it is much less expensive to wash your ceramic plates than it is to buy paper ones.
Reuse Bags
You can save a little money by reusing your plastic storage bags. While reusing the bag that held your kind of squishy peanut butter and jelly sandwich might be more trouble than it’s worth, the bag that held a block of hard cheese could be used to store the half of the onion that you didn’t use with dinner. You can also rinse bags that aren’t very dirty and hang them upside down to dry. Just using a bag twice can help you save money.
Cheap Cleaners
Cleaning the kitchen can be hard work, but it does not have to be expensive. Granted when you go to the store, you are bombarded by dozens of options for keeping your kitchen counters clean. Instead of shelling out $6 bucks on kitchen counter cleaner, you might want to consider some very inexpensive homemade options. Baking soda and vinegar mixed together makes a good cleaner for kitchens and bathrooms. You can dilute bleach, which is typically inexpensive, and use it to sanitize your sink, your counters, and more. Homemade cleaners take a little time, but you save money, and you know exactly what’s in the cleaner that you are using.
Optimize Your Dishwasher
If you don’t watch out, your dishwasher can be a money grabber. When it comes to using your dishwasher, you want to make sure that you run a full load every time. Though that might sound obvious, you have probably run a less than full load at least one before. Think about it this way, you do not want to pay for the same amount of electricity and water that it would take to wash a full load only to wash half a load of dishes. However, you should also be sure not to overload your dishwasher, which can lead to dirty dishes even after washing.
You can also save a little money by turning off the heated dry setting on your dishwasher. It takes a little longer to let them air dry, but your electricity bill will be slightly lower.
A Little Lighting…
Goes a long way. Many of our kitchens have a great deal of lighting. You might have half a dozen cans in the ceiling, accent lighting over a bar or island, under counter lighting, and more. All of these lights can be useful if you need a bright kitchen to do something specific. However, you probably do not need all of these lights all of the time, and you can save a little money on your electricity bill if you make a conscientious effort to only use the lights you need rather than all of them.
These tips will not make you into a millionaire overnight, but they can help you save a few bucks.
Would you add anything else to this list?
Paper towels definitely are expensive. I do reuse my plastic shopping bags for lunch bags during the week. I don’t really do it to save money but I guess it does save me a little bit.
If you don’t use it to save money what do you re-use the plastic bags for? The only thing I could think of is convenience.
I really like this article, as some of these things that most of us do are extremely wasteful and bad for the environment. They can be easily avoided, however. I posted a similar article to this one a few days ago.
http://extrememoneysaving.com/2012/08/29/3-easy-ways-to-save-money-be-healthier-and-help-the-environment/
Paper towels and paper plates are extremely wasteful. According to the statistics I found, Americans spent nearly $2.3 billion on paper towels, which sends 3000 tons of paper towels to landfills each day. That’s outrageous! We should all be phasing them out with reusable cotton towels or the dish towels which this article mentions. I quit using paper plates a long time ago. I think nobody should use paper plates in their home. They’re all ridiculously wasteful.
I do reuse plastic storage bags whenever possible. Those wasteful plastic grocery store bags can be reused in a variety of ways as well.
The multitude of commercial store cleaners are expensive, unnecessary, and contain many toxic ingredients. Vinegar, baking soda, and bleach are all you need to do most household cleaning. Most of them are actually not that time consuming to make, and they often work just as good if not better than the toxic commercial cleaners.
Great article Donny. I agree with you 100%
When I’m cooking, I definitely use a lot of lighting. But any other time, I only use one set. I never really thought about how excessive it can be…
We got Sham Wows a while ago and it’s really helped us cut down on our paper product use. And waste!
I never thought someone would tell me that sham wow’s actually work.. wow it’s not a sham? 🙂
Great tips! I was also surprised to learn recently that cleaning under and behind the fridge every six months can save you cash in electrical costs.
Woah.. I need to start doing the cleaning behind the refrigerator trick.. how does it save you money? clean vent?
I like the lighting one. I left some ceiling lites, bulb free to save on electricity 🙂
Nice! did you try going with all CFL’s also?
reusing and re-purposingold containers also go a long away in saving costs. Also making towel out of your old clothes has its advantages. Off course if you can sew.
The old clothes into towel trick definitely works wonders 🙂
Paper towels are so damn expensive! haha but I usually order them on amazon, so good prices, no tax and free 2 day shipping 🙂 Nothing like coming home to a giant box of paper towels or toilet paper 🙂
I need to start using more hand towels though, be a little more green and save myself some money..
Free 2day shipping.. someone has amazon prime 🙂
Try to cook more than 1 thing at a time if they need the same temperature. Or – if they need different ones, cook one right after the other – so at least the oven is already warmed up!
Good tip.. now only if I was that organized lol
I stopped using paper towel when i realised how many spills and emsses a toddler makes in an hour! my first lot of “mess wipes” was an old towel, and then some terry towelling from a fabric store (i can sew).
Love this article
We now use rags too. They are so easy to wash and they last for years.
I save alot of money by making food you typically buy. I make my own crackers, ketchup, mayo, bread, jam, salad dressing, pizza, cookies, whatever comes in a box, bag, can or bottle I take a good look at the ingredients and I can usually make it- anyone can, without chemicals. So instead of a $4 box of ritz, you spend 30 cents. $3 loaf of bread you spend .40. I save about $300 a month this way!
We do the same thing. Out house is stocked with whole foods and ingredients that we use to make all sorts of things. We don’t have anything in a box. It takes more time to cook things yourself but you save a ton of money and you save your health.