Wednesday, December 7, 2011

A Little Greener!

Almost two weeks ago our dryer broke. It probably needed a new drum belt. It would be an easy fix and I'm sure I could change it myself, but I didn't. So my family and I hung dry our clothes in the bathroom and the laundry room the entire time. I have to admit it was a pain, especially with my son's clothes. I do not have any baby hangers for his clothes so I hung it from my dresser drawers and it took forever to dry! My family decided to replace our washer and dryer with those high efficiency front loading machines. I don't know how much energy our old washers and dryers use, but according to an advertisement on a retailer's website, the natural gas energy costs for the washer is $8 for the year. An electric one is $14 for the year. I'm not sure what our machines are, but I believe the old washer and dryer were electric. However, we can wash larger and dry larger loads therefore we will save more water and energy. The manual said the washer can fit about 26 bath towels, but that seems exaggerated. I don't have that many bath towels to test it. In addition, we had switched our gas water heater for a tankless water heater a few months back when it had went out. Little by little we are getting a little greener.



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6 comments:

  1. Jordan RiewerDecember 7, 2011 at 8:14 PM

    I have the front loading washer/dryer at home! THEY ARE SO AWESOME. They fit so many clothes and use way less detergent.

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  2. Robert BellDecember 8, 2011 at 6:50 AM

    This Thanksgiving, at my aunt's house, I did some laundry. I couldn't figure out how to use her new high efficiency washer, and when I put the soap in, she had a cow, cause I did it wrong! I guess green means doing things differently--doh!

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  3. Tuyet A. NguyenDecember 8, 2011 at 7:36 AM

    I think we are suppose to use a high efficiency detergent made for these machines, but we still have and using the regular detergent.

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  4. stewart rayDecember 11, 2011 at 12:54 PM

    this made me think, does it ever seem some of the time that going green requires going expensive to?

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  5. stewart rayDecember 11, 2011 at 1:03 PM

    I looked up some things about high efficiency detergents. at first i was thinking that a company who makes the washer would recommend a detergent because it was maybe from an affiliated company and would help their profit margins, which in some cases may be true but i did learn that many of these detergents are made to make suds less. what this means is that it is not necessarily a bad thing to use regular detergent but to maybe use less because the washers components are built to respond to the amount of suds to perform most efficiently because they use low water amounts and will manipulate how much water it uses correspondingly to sud presence

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  6. stewart rayDecember 11, 2011 at 1:12 PM

    In thinking about how it seems that going green sometimes means going expensive i found a website that said how to make your own laundry detergents and I wondered whether or not they would work in he dryers. It turns out that they do! It also seems way to incredibly easy haha. but here is the recipe for it:
    1 bar of shaved bar soap (Ivory, ZOTE, Fels-Naptha)
    1 cup of borax
    1 cup of washing soda

    here's the website that goes into the specifics
    http://www.diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/

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