Rich Little Poor Girl SATURDAY

In 2008 I divulged all my best secrets for frugal living.  Once I had shared every last one I “retired” Rich Little Poor Girl, with the promise to reinstate and reveal new tactics as they arose.

It’s been a long sabbatical for the RLPG, but she’s back with a tricky little tidbit that will not only help save you dollars, it will help save the environment, too.

First of all, yes, I know I should’ve posted this last night – then I could have kept the title consistent with the other RLPG Friday postings.  Yesterday I was excited about marketing.  Today I’m too excited about my latest living-on-a-dime tip to wait until next Friday.  I’m sure you can deal with the upheaval. 🙂

A TALE OF TWO HAND WASHES

I prefer to use liquid hand soap for washing my hands.  However, I’ve always been a bit frustrated with how much soap always seems to come out of the regular gel soap pumps, no matter how much care you take to only depress the pump a little.  A year ago I decided to try one of the foaming hand soap pumps.

I immediately fell in love with it.  Just the right amount of pre-lathered, biodegradable soap; no having to rinse and rinse and rinse to rid your hands of excess soapy slipperiness and no wasted product being washed down the drain.

The honeymoon lasted less than a month – the same amount of time it took for the soap dispenser to run out. 

I hadn’t started obsessively over-washing my hands, so I assumed that the water-like consistency of the foaming pump soap was prone to being consumed at a faster rate than regular gel.  Hmmm.  At that rate I would be spending $6.00 every two months for refills.  RLPG didn’t like that math at all.  I started wondering if I could hack my way around the situation.

I quickly came up with a solution (literally).

I bought a one litre refill bag of the same brand of biodegradable soap, but in regular gel soap.  I poured 1/4 cup of soap into a 2-cup measuring glass, slowly added a cup of water, stirred gently with a spoon to dissolve the soap, and then poured the solution into my dispenser.  I pressed the pump and voilà! absolute perfect soap foaminess.

Using this hack a one litre gel refill can fill a foaming soap dispenser SIXTEEN TIMES.  Which equals more than a year’s worth of hand washing.  Using the manufacturer’s product you would have to buy SIX litres of replacement soap over the same year.  Environmentally speaking, you are washing five less litres of soap down the drain.  That’s a happy thought. 🙂

Financially speaking, you are spending $6.00 versus $36.00.  Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but if you have two bathrooms in your home you could be saving $60.00 a year.  Just on hand soap.  Dunno about you but there are plenty of things I’d like to spend sixty bucks on.

Remember, it’s the little victories that count…and a lot of little victories can add up fast.

Rich Little Poor Girl is happy (and clean).

Do you have a product hack you use to save money?  Be generous and share it in the comments!