Can Washing Sandwich Bags Make You Money?

Growing up, I had a little toy combination-lock safe I got one year for Christmas. It was meant to be a piggy bank, with a coin slot in the top. On the front, it had a sticker that read “A penny saved is a dollar earned.” Every time I opened my safe to count my ‘stash, I was more than a little frustrated with this sticker.

Not true! -my child self then, and inner child self now

These days, I’m sort of coming around to the idea, but the math doesn’t support this notion. Not literally, at least. Compound interest is a miracle, but to get from a penny to a dollar is literally 100-fold.

It’ll take a lot of pennies to get to FIRE (financial independence/retire early).

This morning I was washing dishes. (We wash them by hand, to actually get them clean the first time, and to save a little water.) I noticed the non-”paper towels” we use were stuffed full of plastic food storage bags needing to be washed. So after the dishes were done, I started opening the little plastic bags to turn them inside out to soak. I counted, because there were a lot. 35.

Wow, that’s pretty good! 35 we didn’t throw out, that aren’t in the trash, that we’ll get to re-use.

“Single-use” plastic bags soaking in hot soapy water… to be used again!

I pitch them if they’ve been holding gross foods, like raw chicken or super moldy funky something. Otherwise, it was neat to think about how much less “single-use” plastic we weren’t throwing in the landfill.

Then it got me wondering how many pennies it saved us. Did doing this perhaps save us a dollar?

I already said we had 35, but they’re a mix of four kinds: sandwich bags, freezer quart bags, freezer gallon bags, and giant two-gallon plastic bags. If they had all been sandwich, doing this little wash would have saved $.70, or $.02 per bag.

Can you see why I was reminded of the sticker on my little kid safe?

#pennypincher!

Instead, we had 9 sandwich bags, 14 quart bags, 10 gallon bags, and 2 two-gallon bags.

To see the math that’s:

(9 x .02) + (14 x .06) + (10 x .09) + (2 x .57) =

.18 + .84 + .90 + 1.14 =

$3.06 : )

Yep! Washing a few more “dishes” today saved us $3. Yes, I’m ignoring the cost of the soap and water, and my time, because I was already doing this anyway. Consider it a lifestyle cost or investment if you must account for it. The bacon sheet needed the extra soap and water to soak anyway.

Doesn’t sound like much, but when you think about how much coupon-clipping and sale shopping it takes to save $3, that’s ABSOLUTELY worth it.

So no, it didn’t exactly make us money. But it did save us money. And that, friends, makes us closer to FIRE.

Are you optimizers too?

Building strong habits leads to positive results!

You see, a penny saved is more like freedom earned. It’s hard to put a price on that. Living a frugal, spending conscious lifestyle that reduces your expenses means you’re that much closer to financial independence every time you practice good money-saving habits.

It can be hard to quantify your progress towards FIRE when thinking about it in pennies. It might even seem impossible when thinking about it in pennies. But they all count! Every single one! Don’t waste them, put those little copper gems to work!