5 Laundry Tricks That Save Money, Energy, and Your Clothes at the Same Time
The washer and dryer are quietly two of the biggest energy hogs in your house. Here's how to fix that without buying anything fancy.
Laundry doesn’t feel like a big deal. You toss clothes in, press a button, walk away. But the average American household runs close to 300 loads a year, and most of that energy goes somewhere you’d never guess: heating water. 🔥 The good news is that the fixes here are cheap, fast, and mostly free. None of them require a new machine. Most take less time than folding the load you just pulled out of the dryer.
Wash cold, almost always
This is the single biggest lever you can pull. About 90% of the energy a washing machine uses goes toward heating water, according to ENERGY STAR’s clothes washer guidance. Not detergent, not the spin cycle, not the motor. Water heating. 🌡️ Switch from hot to cold and you cut that energy use by roughly 90%. Even dropping from warm to cold saves about 70%, per Procter & Gamble’s fabric care team.
Cold water isn’t a compromise, either. It’s gentler on fibers, which means your favorite shirt keeps its shape and color longer instead of fading into a sad gray version of itself. The Cold Water Saves initiative run by the American Cleaning Institute has been pushing this message for years, and modern cold-water detergents are formulated to actually work at low temperatures now, so you’re not sacrificing clean clothes for savings.
A few situations still call for warm or hot water:
Genuinely soiled items, like cloth diapers or gym gear that’s seen better days
Bedding or towels when someone in the house has been sick
Anything with a documented mold or bedbug problem (hot water is one of the only things that reliably kills both)
Heavily greasy stains that cold water detergent can’t fully break down
Outside of those cases, cold is your default. I’ve made this switch myself and honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I noticed a difference in how clean anything came out. We covered this same principle in our rundown of quick apartment energy fixes, and it’s still the first thing I’d tell a renter to try.
Load it right, not stuffed and not sparse
Here’s a detail people get backwards: washers use roughly the same amount of energy whether the drum is half full or completely full, so running a half-empty load wastes water and electricity for no reason. 🧺 Wait until you have a full load, then run it. That’s the whole trick.
Dryers work differently. A packed drum can’t tumble properly, which means clothes take longer to dry and come out more wrinkled, so the sweet spot there is full but not crammed — clothes should still have room to move.
Quick guardrails for load sizing:
Washer: fill the drum, leave a little room at the top so clothes can circulate
Dryer: never exceed about three-quarters full, or drying time balloons
Mixed fabrics: dry towels and heavy cottons separately from lightweight items so you’re not over-drying the thin stuff to finish the thick stuff
Detergent: measure it. Overdosing doesn’t clean better, it just means more rinsing and more residue
Our piece on daily habits that save water without much thought breaks down just how much a full-load habit adds up to over a year. It’s not glamorous, but the gallons pile up fast. 💧
Ditch the dryer sheets for wool dryer balls
If you’re going to use a dryer at all, this is the cheapest upgrade you can make. Wool dryer balls bounce around the drum and physically separate your clothes, which improves airflow and shortens drying time. The exact numbers vary by study: the David Suzuki Foundation found reductions of 30-50%, while other independent tests land closer to 14%. Even at the conservative end, that’s real electricity you’re not paying for. ⚡
They also solve a problem dryer sheets create. Sheets work by coating your clothes in a thin layer of chemical softener, which builds up on the lint screen over time and can quietly reduce your dryer’s efficiency. Wool balls need zero coating. They just work mechanically.
Why they’re worth the switch:
One set of 3-6 wool balls lasts for hundreds of loads, easily a couple of years of regular use
They cut static and wrinkles almost as well as sheets do
Add a few drops of essential oil if you want scented laundry without synthetic fragrance
No landfill waste every single load, unlike single-use sheets
Small trade-off worth knowing: wool balls can get noisy against a mostly-empty drum, so this is one more reason to run fuller dryer loads. Two fixes, one habit. 🌱
Time it, trim it, skip the extras
This one’s about working with your utility instead of against it. If your electricity provider offers time-of-use pricing, running laundry during off-peak hours (usually late evening or early morning) can shave real money off your bill, since demand and rates both drop when the grid isn’t under strain. We dug into this in our guide to cutting your electric bill after a rate hike, and laundry timing was one of the easiest wins.
A few more trims that cost nothing:
Skip the sanitary or extra-hot cycle unless you actually need it. It’s a major energy spike for marginal benefit most days
Use the high-spin option on your washer. More water spun out means less time (and heat) needed in the dryer
Clean the lint screen after every single dryer load. A clogged screen forces the machine to work harder and run longer, and it’s a genuine fire risk if ignored
Use the cool-down cycle at the end instead of pulling clothes out mid-heat
None of this requires new equipment, just a slightly different sequence of button presses. Have you actually checked whether your utility offers off-peak rates? A surprising number of people never look. 🔍
Catch what your clothes shed
This last one isn’t about your bill, it’s about what’s leaving your house every time you wash synthetic fabric. Every load of polyester, nylon, or acrylic sheds tiny plastic fibers that most washing machines send straight down the drain and eventually into rivers and oceans. France has already made microfiber filters mandatory on all new washing machines sold in the country as of January 2025, and similar rules are moving through legislatures in the EU and several U.S. states.
You don’t have to wait for your machine to be replaced to deal with this. A few practical options:
An external filter that attaches to your washer’s drain hose, catching fibers before they leave the house
A mesh bag like the one we recommended in our sustainable capsule wardrobe guide, which traps microfibers from synthetic items during the wash itself
Washing synthetics less often and in shorter cycles, since agitation time correlates directly with how much a garment sheds
Choosing natural fibers when you’re shopping for new clothes, since cotton and wool break down instead of lingering as plastic
This is the trick that saves the least money up front and matters the most long-term. Microplastics from laundry are now showing up in drinking water and human tissue, which is not a sentence I enjoy writing but is worth knowing.
None of these five changes require a renovation, a new appliance, or even much extra time. Pick one to start with this week, cold water is the easiest, and layer in the rest as they become habit. Your utility bill, your clothes, and the nearest waterway will all notice the difference.