This weekend I gave myself a personal challenge: Try to go the weekend without spending money.
I thought it might be easy, but it has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. All I can think about are all the things we “need” or things to do. I have to laugh at myself because of it! I’m surprisingly antsy about not being able to spend money for three days!
We are simply conditioned to spend. Even when we claim we want to save money, there is this inherent drive to spend. There are clearly a lot of reasons for this, but I’m not going to write about my opinions on that. No wonder people have a hard time saving when there is such a strong pull to spend.
I am proud of myself for resisting the urge to head to the store for something I thought was a necessity. One of the things we “need” right now is laundry soap. We ran out and I had a fair share of laundry to do yesterday. So, after a quick search online I learned of some “in a pinch” alternatives for laundry and voila – clean laundry!
Did you know that 1 tbsp of liquid dish soap can be used in a pinch for a small/medium sized load of laundry? I used some baking soda and vinegar too for good measure.
Our couch cushions have zippered covers and so I washed them too using a touch of dish soap since it did so well with the laundry. I wish I took a before and after picture – the cushions look amazing!! The hint of apple smell is kind of nice too. And to think I once hired an upholstery cleaning company to do the couch ($95) and the cushions didn't turn out as nice. The cost to use 15 mL (1 tbsp) of dish soap = 2 cents!
So far this weekend hasn't cost me any money. I've had a lot of extra down time too because we didn't have to go anywhere for anything. I might have even found a way to save even more money since I found some laundry soap recipes that I might try out (once I can spend the money on the ingredients). I'd say this has been a pretty successful experiment.
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