Do you ever wonder if you'd save more money with a front-loading washer? If you washed 50 percent of your loads in cold water? How about 75 percent? How much would you save annually if you switched to a cheaper detergent? These figures would be a pain to calculate with a pen and paper. But we've found an online calculator to do everything for you.
Typing "Save Electricity" into your Google search bar directs you to the cluttered, distracting website of Mr. Electricity, Michael Bluejay.
But what his site lacks in looks or efficient readability, it makes up for in utility. Our favorite part? The Laundry Costs Calculator.
With this calculator, you can play with loads (ha!) of different settings—things like what percent of loads are done on hot, warm or cold settings, or how many loads of laundry you do per week. In the end, it will spit out a number telling you how much your laundry costs you annually (as well as per load and per month).
But the best part is the side-by-side feature. Plug in your real-life stats on the left side, then change the drop-down settings on the right side of the calculator. Now you'll easily be able to figure out if it's more cost-effective to do more loads in cold water or just switch to cheaper detergent.
And having a real-life figure for laundry done at home will make it really easy for laundromat-dwellers to calculate their possible savings when investing in a new washer or dryer.
Give it a try and let us know what you think!
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The calculator won't work for my situation, either. I live in a rural area, on property that does not have a well. We have a large underground cistern and get get about 2,000 gallons of water delivered to our cistern every month - not that unusual for our area. The water (plus delivery, which is the real expense) costs 35 cents a gallon or $27 per 1,000 gallons. The calculator only goes up to $11 per 1,000 gallons, which I'm sure is fine for the vast majority of users. For us, it was a no-brainer that we would save money using 13 gallons of water per load, instead of 40 gallons with our old top-loading machine.
Helpful! I tried it and it said I can save $35 a year by switching from my old top-loader to a front-loader. But I don't have any gas costs (all electric) and I couldn't turn the calculator down to "$0" for gas. I think it would take me the lifetime of a new washer to make up the difference in price were I to buy a new washer now. So I'll stick with my old one, wash more things in cold, and continue to clip detergent coupons and not fill the cap up to the line to save money on that.
Wow, Unplggd readers and writers sure are a critical, picky bunch. Let's take these complaints:
>>But what his site lacks in looks or efficient readability, it makes up for in utility.
Wow, if THAT's not the pot calling the kettle black.... This particular Unplggd page has almost *no* content at all above the fold. Readers are forced to scroll through almost an entire page of ads and other fluff before you get to any actual content. That's the very opposite of "efficient readability". By contrast, my site has a standard layout and is almost entirely content, so the user doesn't have to scroll all over the place. It's a lot more "efficient" than Unpluggd.
>>Helpful! I tried it and it said I can save $35 a year by switching from my old top-loader to a front-loader. But I don't have any gas costs (all electric) and I couldn't turn the calculator down to "$0" for gas.
Obviously, the calculator ignores the gas rate field if you chose that you have electric appliances! You could also see that if you changed the gas rates when you have electric appliances selected then the results didn't change. In any event, I just set the calculator to hide the gas rates if you're using all-electric appliances.
>>Useless calculator....I already own a front loader.
The question is: what is the payback timeframe if I buy a new, more efficient washer? No answers from this calculator.
Well then, you have a really weird definition of "useless". The calculator figures your cost for washing, for drying, and washing plus drying together, on a per-load, per-month, and per-year basis. One would think that that would be really valuable information to many folks, but no, because the calculator doesn't answer your special, rare, esoteric question then the whole calculator is "useless". Right.
>>The water (plus delivery, which is the real expense) costs $27 per 1,000 gallons. The calculator only goes up to $11 per 1,000 gallons.
Okay, that's a fair complaint. I just added higher costs to choose from, and I also put in an "other..." choice so you can enter your own.