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Products to Save you Money: Slash your Laundry, Cleaning and Cooking costs

Chiara Cavaglieri 20th Feb 2020 7 Comments

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Here’s our selection of the best products to save you money on your laundry, cleaning and cooking costs. There are lots of clever products out there and all at great prices. So read on to find out how to save energy and your money – from ovens that use 80% less energy, to eco-balls for your laundry.

Slash your dry cleaning costs

 products to save you moneySave a small fortune by dry-cleaning clothes in your own dryer, with the Dry Cleaners At-Home Dry Cleaning Cloths from Lakeland. A pack of six cloths costs £11.99. Use one of the special cloths as a spot cleaner for any tough marks. Then put the cloth into a tumble dryer with one to five garments on a medium heat for 20 minutes. Once finished, remove immediately and hey presto!

The kit will clean up to 30 garments in total, which means you could do all your dry-cleaning for as little as 39p per item.

It’s really effective for freshening up your clothes – but bear in mind that if you have serious stains or grime to shift, it might not be up to the same standard as the professionals!

Save £100s with a simple washing machine

A washing machine with fewer dials is just as good as the more complicated machines. And, these washing machines can costs £100s less. Most households only use a few programmes, so why pay extra for use you won’t use?

Try the Argos Clearance section for some fantastic bargains.

Use 75% less powder

Eco Balls soften clothes even in hard water, so no conditioner is necessary, and as they do not contain soap, you can also cut out the rinse cycle to save energy.

Go to EcoZone and pick up some Eco Balls (£14.73), which you put in with your clothes in the washing machine. They provide extra scrubbing action which means you can reduce the amount of powder you use by 75%. They really work! We’ve tried them.

Use less electricity

Lakeland sell these Dryerballs Tumble Dryer Balls (£7.99 for two), which dry clothes 25% quicker, cutting down on your electricity usage. Also, these drying balls reduce creases so you don’t need to use fabric softener and you get to spend less time ironing. We use these too – great things.

Use cold water washes

When you’re washing darks, a cold water wash with detergent will clean your clothes – and save you money on electricity. It also helps if you only wash full loads of laundry (the energy used for a full load is the same as the amount used for a small load). Using a clothesline or drying rack instead of tumble drying everything is another way you can make significant energy savings.

Save water and save money

 products to save you moneyTaking shorter showers can save you water and energy. Spending just three and a half minutes less in the shower will save up to £180 per year for a family of four. A Shower Timer times your shower and lets you know when it should be up. Buy one for only £4.99 from Amazon here.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, by simply switching to a water efficient shower you could save money. For a four-person household, you could cut £70 off your gas bill and £115 off your water bill. And you can buy them for as little as £15!

For more tips and tricks take a look at our ’10 ways to save money and save water’ article here.

Reusable nappies

A massive 3 billion nappies are thrown away in the UK every year. Most end up in landfill and can take hundreds of years to decompose. Using reusable nappies can have a real impact on landfill problems and they can save you a lot of money.

The average person household spends £1875 on branded disposable nappies. However, if you switch to reusable nappies, you can save a whopping £1475, as the average reusable nappy family only spend £400 on their reusables. That’s a huge saving!

Waitrose and Partners sell this pack of three reusable nappies for £18.75 here.

Alternatively, many local councils are now offering free reusable nappy trials to encourage parents to stop using disposable nappies and therefore reduce the number that end up in landfills. There are lots of councils offering these sort of schemes.Search your council here, if you’re interested.

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Eco friendly cleaning products

We compared prices of environmentally friendly cleaning products at supermarkets Tesco and ASDA. We then checked them against other well-known brands, and found that you can actually do your bit for the environment and save money by swapping these brands for the greener supermarket options.

The supermarket eco brands aren’t as cheap as their budget brand options, but they are really competitive when you compare them to better known brands like Flash and Cif. We Moneymagpies decided to try out the supermarket products for ourselves and the results were on the whole really positive. We found that the spray cleaners did the trick and required no more elbow grease than our usual types – in fact the only difference we could find was in the smell.

All of the eco products had a fairly distinctive smell – which actually turned out to be a nice change from the usual chemically smells of other cleaning products.

Visit ASDAAldi and Tesco to compare prices.

lemons are a great money saving cleaning product

DIY Cleaning Products

Another brilliant way to save money on cleaning products is to make your own.

There are lots of basic household items that clean just as well as shop-bought cleaning products. Lemons, vinegar and olive oil aren’t just for making a tasty salad dressing you know – they’re also great for making your house sparkle.

  • Lemons – Surface cleaner and stain remover
  • White vinegar – Surface cleaner, stain remover, de-scaler
  • Bicarbonate of soda – Deodoriser
  • Olive Oil – Furniture polish

Get all the information in our article on cheap, green cleaning products you can make yourself.

Clever kitchen tips

An Eco Kettle

It’s so easy to fill the kettle with too much water and waste electricity, boiling more water than we need.

This Vektra Kettle has incorporated vaccum flask technology to boil water efficiently, which is kept hot for 4 hours.

You can find this kettle at a great price from the Ethical Superstore.

Use 80% less energy

The Remoska from Lakeland is a one-pot cooker that uses just 610W (or less) to cook.

At £199.99, it’s not cheap – but it is a really versatile piece of kitchen equipment. You can cook all sorts in a Remoska, from soup and roast chicken, to pasta and desserts. You can even bake cakes!

Keep food fresh for longer

Use these Stayfresh Longer bags from Lakeland for only £6.49 to keep your fruit and veg going for longer. The surface is treated to prevent moisture and bacteria forming. All you have to do is put your fruit or veg in then seal the bag with a clip.

We all have trouble keeping our bread fresh. To help you with this problem take a look at this bread storage bag. It’s ideal for storing loaves and will stay fresher in this bag for longer than it will in a bread bin. For only £8.99, it’s an essential product for your kitchen.

Use Klipits (bag clips) to seal your bags of crisps and cereal packets. They should make your food last weeks, or even months, longer. You can get a bumper pack from Lakeland from for £9.99. This pack contains small, standard and jumbo sized clips so it’s really useful, and they last for years so you won’t need to keep buying them.

25p off your coffee

Starbucks, Costa, Pret a Manger, and Cafe Nero offer up to a 50p discount when you use a reusable cup for your takeaway drink. These pennies will soon add up. Although coffee cups are made from recycled materials, the plastic coating means that they cannot be recycled again so it will make a difference to your purse and to the planet.

Make and sell jam

This Jam and Jelly Maker from Lakeland will make any jam maker’s day much easier. It isn’t cheap at £149.99 but if you want to be able to make jam quickly and easily on a regular basis it’s a nice, simple gadget to do it for you.

Find out how you can make money selling cakes and jam here.

If we’ve left you feeling inspired, then check out some of our other articles on how to save money in your own home below:

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Kath
Kath
13 years ago

Re: Remoska (Lakeland) I have had a remoska for three years now and it is the most fantastic kitchen item I have ever bought. I have used it to make garlic bread, oven chips, bake bread, fruit cake, yorkshire pudding and small pies. I would advise buying the largest size – more versatile. Not suitable for anyone with poor vision because the wire be a bit tricky and care is needed when taking off the lid (the element is in the lid so it is really important to put it the wrong way up on a heat proof surface when… Read more »

Pauline
Pauline
13 years ago

Just joined your site. Great. Have already taken up some of the suggestons but you have loads and loads more. Thankyou.

p mcdougal
p mcdougal
13 years ago

i tried several brands of eco balls, cheapest yet is from betterware catalogue,not refillable, dearer ones crack eventually anyway,

kendra
kendra
13 years ago

I have been using Ecoballs and Dryer balls for over a year now – brilliant. Have also got Saop nuts – and I use NO softener at all. Laundry comes out clean and the drying doesn;t need ironing – if caught quickly – we also put our machines (incl. dishwasher) on at night using a timer and making the most of the Economy 7 electricity tariff (1am-8am) and we figure we are saving at least £20 per month . Also love Ecover washing up liquid and if you use microfibre cloths – you don’t need any cleaning product at all… Read more »

Tatiana Rentas
Tatiana Rentas
14 years ago

A pal encoraged me to check out this post, nice post, fascinating read… keep up the cool work!

Chris
Chris
14 years ago

Hi. I like the idea of using Soap Nuts, but please can you advise me whether I need to add Fabric Conditioner to the wash or not.

Many thanks.

Chris

rocky
rocky
14 years ago

you should be more exact in showing the prices of of cleaners that people actually use, like windex or that kind of thing. that would be incredibly usefull for a school project that i am doing lol good job though

Jasmine Birtles

Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.

Jasmine Birtles

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