So the month is up after trying my hand washing dishes challenge! When we first decided to see if hand washing would actually save us money we Hubby asked me how much we would need to save to make it worth while. I wasn't sure. He suggested $50. We both agreed that $50 each month would probably be worth the extra time. In the beginning my kitchen was sparkling clean almost every day. I really enjoyed having a nice clean kitchen and hand washing dishes didn't seem so hard or time consuming after all. But throughout the month my kitchen has looked like this.
Don't judge ;) I'm sure we all have days when this is our kitchen. After 2 very busy days my kitchen was overflowing with dishes. I was dreading the time it would take to wash the dishes and get caught up. I had finally hit the point that washing dishes by hand was no longer peaceful but just another chore. And the month was only half over. As soon as the 7th came I was checking the mail daily waiting for the bill to finally come in. I was dying to get back to using the dishwasher if we didn't save $50 this past month. I was at the point that I didn't care if it was saving us $49 I wasn't going to continue. Of course I knew once the bill came that even $30 would convince me to keep it up. I really try to save money in every area I can and $30 each month would save $360 for a full year. That adds up pretty fast.
Finally today, April 21st, the electric bill showed up in the mail. I couldn't get the envelope open fast enough! I was shocked at the difference in the price! Last month was $191! If I wanted to start using the dishwasher again and get all those dishes from above cleaned with a little less effort it needed to be larger than $141. I couldn't honestly open it hoping it was more money.
So finally I opened it as is was $106! We saved $85! Eighty Five Dollars! I couldn't believe it. If it wasn't nap time I would have probably been jumping up and down and dancing around my house! I quickly got my shoes on and ran to the shed where Hubby was. I should him and he was shocked! He was so excited we high-fived! I showed him the difference in the usage and he couldn't believe the difference!
We haven't changed anything else! If anything we thought it wouldn't be as low because I had to use the dryer some this month because of the rain and we used the A/C a little on a couple really hot days. So I'm pretty excited to get off the computer and get to the kitchen to clean my dishes. I now know that each time I'm standing in the kitchen washing dishes that I'm saving my family money! A total of $1,020 each year by just spending a little extra time in the kitchen each day! It's totally worth it now! And I'm excited that I was able to make such a big change!
How do you save money in your house?
**Read the first handwashing post here**
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