It has come to my attention that my mental math isn't as good as I had previously thought. lol Thanks Gabe, miss you too.
I am able to save $144.00 a year just by making my own ice cubes. I figured out that we were spending $3.00 or more a week buying bags of ice. I decided to see if my small RV refrigerator freezer unit would freeze ice cube trays. I bought 3 packages of trays, washed them, filled them with filtered water from the sink and put them in the freezer.
I takes two to three days for the trays to freeze but that's just about how long the previous ice cubes lasted. I bought a few more trays until I had a total of 12 trays. I also bought a small dish pan to use as a ice cube bin. The total I spent for trays and bin was less than $10.00. By the way I do not like the ice cube trays I found at WalMart. The best ones I have found were are Dollar General priced at 2 for $1.25.
Now every two or three days I empty all the ice trays into the dish pan and refill them. Since starting this experiment several weeks ago we have only bought ice, once. That's much better than three times a week like we did before the trays.
Years ago, when I was still a girl at home we always used ice trays. Now days everything is about being easy. Stop at the store and pick up a bag of ice. Worse yet, drive to town and buy ice. Cringe. When I think of all the money I could have saved by always using ice cube trays.....oh dear.
It does take time. Maybe 5 minutes to dump and refill the trays. Yeah, I have five minutes to save $1.00. That works out to $60.00 an hour if I did it for a full hour. So you could say I am saving $60.00 an hour by making my own ice cubes. Or better yet, I am not paying someone else $60.00 an hour to make ice for me. That isn't even including the ridiculous price of gasoline.
If you live most places bags of ice are much more than $1.00 as well, we just happen to have a place that you can buy it that cheap. WalMart is even more expensive than that.
Do you make your own ice, have an ice maker or buy ice?
My husband and I were JUST talking about the old ice trays last night!! I was on a website called The Vermont Store (or something like that) and they sell the old metal ice trays that have the handle that pulls back. We were reminiscing about the sound of that whole process of pulling back the handle and the ice cracking.
ReplyDeleteYes, we are lazy these days. What would a child think about having to empty the ice trays these days?!
Have fun and congrats on saving money!
Great idea! Although your math is a little off, I think. There a 12 5 minute increments in an hour. So if if takes 5 minutes to empty and fill the ice trays, according to my calculations you are making $12/hour. Which is still good! It would have to take 1 minute or less to make $60/ hour. ;) Love YOU!!
ReplyDeleteBTW, We really missed getting to see you guys at camp this year. Hope everything is going well!
Oh my goodness, I have never heard of somebody using so much ice! How many do you have at home? Three? Haha! I'm so glad you have found a system that is working for you. Its always nice to save money. The blog post I'm writing right now is about that too.
ReplyDeleteWe have 4 people here at home and we live in south Texas where it is hot, hot, hot.
ReplyDeleteThats why we use so much ice.
I think we are ice pigs.
I also freeze lime juice from limes on sale, tomato juice, etc, all in ice cube form as they are easy to use in recipes etc.
ReplyDeleteAs to using so much ice, we too live in a desert climate. It is refreshing to sip on a cool drink.
I saved water bottles and I freeze those, which I then put in my five gallon cooler. I have it filled with tap water that I keep cool. This way we do not turn on and off the sink for a drink, and I can cool five gallons with five ice water bottles. We drink tons here to stay hydrated!
I love tips on savings and am gad you shared this!
Jennifer