The Wednesday Morning Weekly.
This is a simple frugal hack we are using now to save around $47 dollars per year. We really enjoy discovering dozens of little hacks like these which allow us to easily, automatically and permanently save this amount of money or more per year, sacrificing nothing.
I watched a youtube video about a year ago by Technology Connection which discussed various dishwashing machine pods, powders etc. He very carefully compared the effectiveness and cost of each, along with how to properly use them in the proper amounts. It’s a bit of a long video but I enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.
Summarizing his video, he suggests Walmart Great Value Automatic Dishwasher Powder — currently at $4.98 per 75 oz box — at 30 grams of powder per load with about a third of it (10 grams) in the pre-wash area — which is often just thrown on the door — and the rest of it (20 grams) in the time released compartment; two flat soup spoons full turns out to be just about 30 grams and is what we use for measuring. There are 2126 grams in 75 ounces, so this box of detergent covers 70 loads of dishes; this comes to 7 cents per load.
We have a Bosch dishwashing machine which recommends Finish Pods. We had been using them for a while but really didn’t like how expensive they were. They are currently $19.98 for 100 pods at Sam’s Club or 20 cents per pod — we never seem to find them on sale and when we do it isn’t enough of a savings.
Therefore it costs nearly three times as much to clean a load of dishes with Finish Pods vs Great Value Automatic Dishwasher Powder. At one load of dishes per day this comes to a savings of 13 cents per day. Thirteen cents times 365 days is equal to an annual savings of $47.
We now exclusively use this GV Automatic Dishwasher Powder over the Finish Pods.
We do exactly as instructed in the video, putting about 10 grams of the 30 grams in the door area of the machine and the rest (20 grams) in the time release compartment. And the dishes came out every bit as clean as the Finish Pods with no spots. We use no rinse agent and the machine has no heating elements inside — completely air dries. (We use all glass, ceramic & metal with some wood — no plastics so the dishes dry well without spots.)
We pour the box of GV powder into an airtight Lock & Lock container and throw in a soup spoon as a measuring device for each load. We also use a small arts & crafts paint brush to wipe the tracks of the time release compartment before sliding closed, to make sure it functions well. (We also set a 30 minute timer to remind us to check that the door has opened properly — which we also had to do for the Finish Pods as well. Nineteen times out of 20 it opens but sometimes it doesn’t for some reason so hence why we use a timer to check to make sure it does.)
By the way, we compared the Great Value Powder to the more expensive Cascade Powder and found it performed every bit as well at a substantial savings.
On its own, $47 a year in savings doesn’t seem like much money, but combined with dozens of other hacks like these it amounts to thousands of dollars of savings every year.
