Five Ways to Make Your Budget Greener!

Going green doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of green! Reducing and reusing in our homes is just as important as recycling and can help save you some cash. Here are five tips we’ve incorporated for saving green while going green.

• Pick Cloth Over Paper
Hand towels and cloth napkins are everywhere in our home. We use them to wash our dishes, wipe our hands, clean up spills, carry a sandwich to the porch and everything else marketing departments say you need a paper towel for. I try to keep them in shades of white or blue because those are colors of laundry loads I would already be washing. This reduces the amount of trash that we produce for the landfill and saves money too!

• Choose Real Dishes
Like with napkins and paper towels, we have a large stack of real plates. Additionally, we’ve also broken the habit of pre-rinsing before putting our dishes in the dishwasher. With proper dishwasher maintenance, we discovered the dishes get just as clean as they did before without the extra step. There are certain things I’ve learned need to be washed out by hand, but on the whole, rewashing a couple bowls is less water than pre washing the whole load.

• Cook From Scratch
When my family “went healthy,” I was amazed at how much of the things I didn’t want in my diet were in pre-packaged foods. Not just in frozen dinners and snack cake, but also packaged pasta dishes, cake mixes, and canned sauces. When I started researching healthier alternatives, I discovered I could make most of my favorite products myself. The added bonus to knowing exactly what was going into my food was that I was spending less money on the convenience factor and producing less waste from my kitchen.

• Turn Off Lights and Water
If you get into the habit of turning off your lights when you’re not in a room, and sometimes even when you are, you’ll be surprised at the savings you’ll see in your energy bills. I don’t decorate with heavy drapes and I keep my blinds open all day to utilize as much natural light as possible. Conserving water is also easy if you can get yourself into the habit of shutting off the water when you’re lathering up in the shower or brushing your teeth at the sink.

• Buy Second Hand
Swap meets, thrift stores and quaint retro shops make their living on gently used clothing and household items. If you’re thinking of buying a small appliance or trying to find the perfect blouse, look there first. You’ll save a lot of money from buying it new and save some of those products from ending up in our landfills.

Nowadays, we pay way more for convenience and packaging than any generation before. So before you buy a product, think about what will be left over when you’re done with it and look for ways to reduce, reuse, or even do without.

Photo credit: The Table is Set by Rex Roof/flickr

London resident Samantha Hathaway is a financial consultant and a content contributor for Payday Loans, a company providing payday loans for money advances when you need them.