A few months ago I told you I was trying to cut back on the amount of disposable products we use in our home. We figure we can do our small part to help the environment and save a little money at the same time.
But how much can you really save by eliminating or reducing the use of disposable products like paper towels, plastic cups, and paper plates?
As it turns out quite a bit!
With kids and pets in the house we used to go through paper towels like crazy. Every time there was a spill or mess to clean up we reached for the paper towels. But then I decided to break that habit and reach for a washable towel or dish rag instead.
We’ve managed to cut back our paper towel usage dramatically. We went from using a roll of paper towels every two days to using the same amount in 2 weeks!
At a roll per day over the course of a full year we would have used about 183 rolls. But at a roll every two weeks we’ll only use 26 rolls! That’s a difference of 157 rolls of paper towels!
How much does that actually save us? Well I stopped in Target at lunch time and jotted down a few prices:
Bounty Paper Towels = $2.19 for a 70 count roll.
Target Brand = $3.49 for a 156 count roll.
Now this doesn’t take into account all the different multi-packs and varying price per unit but I didn’t really have time to sit in the aisle taking notes for an hour. So for argument’s sake let’s just be conservative and say each roll would cost $2.
That means we will save $314 this year just by switching from paper towels to washable rags.
I still can’t believe we were spending that much money on something so stupid all this time. Just goes to show you the importance of tracking your spending and always looking for new ways to save money.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Woah! That bring a whole new definition of the so called “latte effect.” Saving $314 is awesome!
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Yea, I’m pretty happy with the results. Such a simple change in routine can have a surprising effect.
My son had a paper towel addiction going on for several months, and we all got into it. They ARE so easy to grab. Finally we just stopped buying them and got back to using my cloth towels. The only problem with the cloth towels is there aren’t enough to do a load by themselves so they get tossed in with other clothing and sometimes they get misplaced. I must have two dozen cloth dish towels (bought from Savers or Goodwill) and can only find three or four right now. I never figured out how much we were using and don’t know how much we were saving, but your savings is excellent!