Hello all! So, I have been wanting to do this experiment since moving overseas. I hang dry all our laundry except for the towels because they get all hard and not pleasant to use when getting out of a nice hot shower My friends all think I’m nuts because hanging clothes to dry in the states just isn’t the norm but I prefer trying to minimize our bills. I started staying home when we moved here and I think I have several jobs the main one is of course to care for our little ones, than keep the place clean, and minimize our expenses. I minimize them by cooking most of our meals and hanging the clothes to dry.

So, onto the experiment…. I basically logged the times, the meter readings, and kept what I was using in the house constant (tv on, desktop on, …) for the two hours it took to dry the one load of laundry. Yes! Two very long hours it’s ridiculous! Anyways, back to my findings. I found that when the dryer was on we used 4 kWh more than when the dryer wasn’t running for two hours. We pay 9.712 pence (currency is in pounds) a kWh which is 38.85 pence for each load of laundry if I do 5 loads of laundry a week and dry them all that would cost us 101.01 pounds a year and with today’s’ exchange rate of 1.42 that would equal $143.43 just to dry our clothes! When I first calculated the 38.83 pence a load I thought “Wow, maybe I should just use the dryer for now on”. Until, I calculated the yearly cost. I don’t think using the dryer is worth $143 a year I would prefer to do something else with that money. In conclusion, I’m going to stick with hang drying our clothes.

Net Worth April 2016

This month is looking a little better than the last few but we still have a ways to go before our investments are in the green. Our house fund goal is to have $92,000 before the end of this year. We need to save roughly $960 a month for the next 9 months which I believe is achievable but it will be a challenge with our vacations coming up. I find that being so into the month to month numbers makes things a bit stressful. Life and finances really is a balancing act and I’m always trying to find equilibrium.