MOM: Is It Worth It?

In the “Mind of Megan” there are lots of things we do around the house because we think they save us money. Or, likewise, there are things we do around the house that we do because we think it saves us time (and is therefore worth the money). I thought I would breakdown a few things I do around the house to save me time/money and see how much they are really worth. Let’s take a look, shall we?

#1- Washing out plastic baggies (ie, ziplocs). According to my Aldi price list, one box of 40 zippered freezer bags is $2. This also is a typical sale price for Ziplocs (2/$4). So that is the common price we will use for this example. That way, no “work” as far as couponing or major sale shopping needs factoring in.

So 1 bag= ~.06 cents after taxes. I’d say it takes me about 3 seconds to completely wash out one plastic baggie. That means my hourly rate for washing out plastic baggies is $1.20/hr. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but the flip side would be if you chose to toss your baggies, you’d be throwing away $1.20 an hour. OUCH! If you make minimum wage, that’s a lot! LOL.

#2- Sewing buttons on shirts. New or used, my shirts always seem to be having rather important buttons popping off. Some would say “just give it to Goodwill, let someone else deal with it”. Well sure, I can see that. But let’s think about how much we’d potentially be “making” if we fix that shirt ourselves. So let’s pick a low end average price for a nice shirt. How about $20?

$20 shirt. It takes me about 10 minutes, start (finding wherever I put my needle and thread last…) to finish (tying off the final knot). Hourly rate: $120. Holy. Crap. That is a skill worth learning! I guess we could take out the .20c it cost for the thread (rolls eyes).

Well let’s say you’re me and ARE that person that shops at Goodwill for nice Ann Taylor shirts with missing buttons (or small tears, or making slight alterations to size). You’re spending $2.50 for $20 + shirts and fixing up 6 per hour. 6 shirts at $2.50= $15. 6 shirts at $20 = $120. So you’d be saving yourself at least $105 in one hour. This, of course, is not counting the time and money you spend looking for and buying matching buttons. So let’s knock that down to $95 per hour. That’s better.

#3- Washing cloth diapers. Regular disposable Huggies (size 3, 36ct on sale with a $2 coupon) are $7.99/pk, or ~.22c/ diaper. Let’s say you change the baby’s diaper 6 times a day, to make this easy. That pack of diapers would last you 6 days. Now I know this size wouldn’t fit from newborn to potty training, but lets stick to these numbers because I know it pretty much works out as far as number of diapers per pack decreasing as their size increases and need to change as often decreases. So just estimating, that would be 182 1/2 packs of diapers from newborn to age 3. That makes it $8/pack x 182 1/2 packs= $1,460 on diapers over 3 years.

Cloth diapers (fancy all-in-ones that last from 8lbs – 3 years) cost $17.50 each. I think it is best to have a stock of at least 18 GOOD cloth diapers that you like and enjoy using on your child. So you’d spend $315 on the initial cost of the cloth diapers (that’s without using any discount codes online, taking advantage of sales or buying diapers used). Detergent is another cost. A 100-load container of Tide free costs $15 and lasts me 9 months ( you only use a small drizzle of detergent). So I would need 4 of those over 3 years, so that is another $60. Water to wash the diapers is a very minimal cost, we actually didn’t even notice our bill go up- But let’s just say of our last water bill, 10% of it was for diapers. That would be $5 on a high month. $5 x 36 months = $180. Most cloth diaper covers are air dried, and the microfiber inserts I usually dry along with a different load of laundry, so I’m not even going to count that cost. Total cost over 3 years: $555 dollars. That is almost 1/3 the cost of disposable diapers. And I never “run out” of diapers and have to run to the store. I just toss them in the wash. So they save me time as well!

Gosh, think if you had cloth wipes as well!

**Note: Some people save a lot of money on disposable diapers by couponing and taking advantage of rebates. Believe me, if I had gone the ‘posy way, I would do it too!! So disposable diapers can be as cheap as free if you work hard enough. Also, you can find cloth diapers used and on heavy discount during promotional periods or if you buy “seconds”. Those are things to keep in mind. But I will say that I’m glad I spent one day a week researching cloth diapers and the best deal I could get ONCE- and never had to worry about it again. Researching and working hard to get free disposables would be a constant focus. I’m just sayin! I’d rather focus on sewing buttons on those $120/hr shirts! LOL.

I hope you enjoyed this entry from the “Mind of Megan” and I hope you leave any comments (or arguments ) in the comment feed.

Here’s to living- happier, healthier, more FRUGAL lives!

~Frugalmegan~