海角大神

Dryer sheets do a pretty good job of reducing static cling on items in the dryer, plus they can add a bit of freshness to the smell of clothes and other articles.

Still, the cost of these sheets adds up. For 鈥渘ame brand鈥� sheets, you鈥檙e going to be paying about five cents per sheet. For generic sheets, the cost goes down to about three cents. If you鈥檙e using a dryer sheet in each load and you average a load a day, that鈥檚 $11 to $18 a year in dryer sheet costs.

That鈥檚 an unnecessary expenditure, especially since dryer sheets have at least two uses in them and you can cut them in half and use each half separately. That creates four uses out of each dryer sheet, cutting the cost down to $2 to $4 per year, which saves you $9 to $14 over the year depending on your brand.

Plus, it鈥檚 trivially simple to do.

For reusing sheets, I just save a sheet or two on top of the dryer. If I dry a load of laundry, I check to see if there鈥檚 a dryer sheet on top of the dryer. If there is, I use that sheet. If there鈥檚 not, I grab one from the box.

When a load is finished, I check to see if there鈥檚 a tear along one of the edges. If there鈥檚 not, then I tear the dryer sheet so that there is a tear along one of the edges and toss it on top of the dryer. If there is already a tear, I dispose of the dryer sheet.

This system takes no time at all compared to just pulling out a dryer sheet and disposing of one, so it鈥檚 just a doubling of the value you get from dryer sheets.

As for cutting them in half, the easiest way to do that is in bulk. Take a big stack of dryer sheets and run them through a paper cutter, doing big handfuls at once. You can cut a box of them in just a few seconds this way, which doubles the number of dryer sheets you get.

Another technique is to just use a large serrated knife and simply cut the entire unopened box in half right down the middle. This effectively 鈥渙pens鈥� the box and exposes two halves, each of which contain dryer sheets that have already been cut. Again, this takes just a few seconds.

I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 particularly cost-effective to cut them by hand with scissors, but if you are looking for a task for idle hands to do while watching a television show, this is certainly one thing you could be doing. After all, each sheet you cut would save you a few cents.

Maximizing dryer sheet usage is a small thing, of course, and it鈥檚 not a big financial win by itself. However, there鈥檚 very little time invested in this at all and the rewards from it are real enough to buy you lunch once a year. That鈥檚 a win for me, even if it鈥檚 a small one.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my 鈥減hotography intern鈥� for this project.