Sorry this giveaway is now closed! Thank you all for your fabulous entries. We would like to congratulate Nikki (Commenter #710) for her winning entry! A huge thanks to Cheer for sharing this giveaway with our readers and we hope to offer more in the future!

These past couple of months I have had the incredible opportunity of working for Cheer brightCLEAN™ Detergent as a spokesperson for their back-to-school season. I sometimes want to pinch myself because running this site and the jobs that have come from a mom’s simple idea of teaching frugal living have been so amazing for me & for my family.

The opportunity to represent a wallet-friendly detergent and to promote ways moms can save for the school year is a perfect fit for what I do every day as a mom and I couldn’t be more pleased to represent the company.

Today I am heading to NYC to do a media tour on Wednesday for a variety of morning and afternoon news shows promoting ideas for ways moms can save in every room in their house during the back-to-school season. As the years have gone by, I have become more in tune with what puts a strain on our budget and, to me, it is often the little things that add up the most.

Let’s take a tour through the home, shall we, and find some hidden expenses in the home that could be corrected with very little effort and by making small changes in your house and purchasing habits.

Kitchen

It is the heart of the home, and one of my favorite places to start saving money! Here are some simple switches you could make when preparing those back-to-school lunches that could have a really positive impact on the family budget.

Avoid Snack Size Products– The aisles are brimming over at the grocery stores with snack-size products during the back-to-school season, but do your best to avoid these products if you can. By paying for the convenience of these products, you are paying double or triple the amount for a lot less food. Invest in a set of inexpensive containers that can be filled with your very own snacks for a fraction of the price.

Buy in Bulk– With the convenience of online shopping, it makes it very easy to shop for school supplies in bulk and do price comparisons from the comfort of your own home. Jot down the prices and ounces/sizes of the products you commonly purchase for school lunches at the grocery store. When you get home, visit your local wholesale club’s website to compare the prices there and see if there is some savings by buying in bulk. I love to use this price sheet and this Price Book 101 article has great information for keeping your own price journal. What I have found is some snacks, fruits, vegetables, and drinks can be bought in bulk for a lot less than buying them in the standard sizes at the grocery store.

Chop and Create At Home– Designate one day a week (my day is on Sunday) to creating your snack packs and making items that can be tucked in your children’s lunches. For example, instead of buying pudding packs ($.89 for four at Aldi), buy a box of instant pudding and make it at home for half the price. Instead of buying pre-chopped vegetables, chop them yourself and pay half (or less) on the price.

To keep your lunches organized and accessible, designate one refrigerator drawer towards school lunches and allow children to select one sandwich, one healthy snack, one “fun” snack, and their drink from the drawer. I even tuck commonly forgotten items in the drawer like napkins and spoons to trigger my tired brain to kick in on busy school mornings.

Bathroom

Getting ready for the big first day of school can sometimes feel like you are flushing money down the toilet, but it doesn’t have to be! Here are a few of my favorite ideas for saving money in your bathroom.

Shower Yourself in Savings- Did you know that the average shower uses six to ten gallons of water?  Consider investing in an egg timer and a low-flow showerhead to reduce water waste in the bathroom. By cutting showers down to five to eight minutes per person, you can save an easy $200 a year by taking quicker showers. The bonus, of course, is that this will help keep the entire family on schedule for getting out the door on time in the morning.

Designate Towels– Instead of having everyone use a towel only once, designate a towel to each family member that they can use for a whole week before putting it in the hamper. Two ways you could keep track of the towels is by assigning each family member a specific color of towels or you could sew a simple loop of grosgrain ribbon at the corner of each towel in a particular color for each family member that the towels could also be hung from following showers.

Shop Drugstore Deals & Coupons– While I am not a typical coupon-user for groceries, I LOVE the savings that can be had by shopping at the drugstores and combining them with coupons. Consider visiting sites like Money Saving Mom or Deal Seeking Mom to track coupon and rebate programs to score those health and beauty items for free.

Ditch the Expensive Bathroom Cleaners– Making your own cleaners is thrifty, frugal, and a lot better for the environment. Most cleaners can be made from simple ingredients that you can buy in bulk at your local wholesale club. Consider stocking up on baking soda, white vinegar, and dish soap to create your own cleaners at home. For a simple bathroom scouring paste, mix dishwashing liquid with baking soda until you have a thick paste and use this throughout your bathroom. For an all-purpose cleaner for your bathroom surfaces, mix together two tablespoons of mild dishwashing soap and two cups of water in a spray bottle and give it a shake. Glass cleaner can easily be made with one part white vinegar to one part water. All surfaces can be swiped with microfiber cloths (found in the automotive section of your wholesale club) and windows get a lint-free shine with a little of your newspaper from the recyclables.

Laundry Room

If there is anything that I have learned since school has started, it is that the laundry definitely seems to multiply with play clothes and school clothes every single day. Luckily, we have you covered with a few ways to save in your laundry room!

Switch to Cold Water- I have found that washing in warm and hot water are very rarely needed in our house. Just by switching to a cold water cycle you can save approximately $200 a year and it is a much greener alternative too!

Line Dry Those Clothes– Before the winter weather hits, take advantage of these beautiful fall days and consider line drying your clothing to save your family money.  There are many great benefits to utilizing a clothesline.

One of the best benefits of line drying your clothes is that they will last much longer than they would if they were just thrown in the dryer. Did you ever think about how much lint is in your dryer when you are done drying it? That is actually all of the worn-away fabric, that would have remained on your garments if you had line dried them. Zippers cause snagging on clothing when tossed in the dryer, but when line dried your garments will remain intact.

The second benefit is the energy-savings.  Did you know that electric dryers are often among the top energy-uses in a home, followed by refrigerators, lighting and water heaters? You will save your family $.36 a load by line-drying and you will keep those back-to-school clothes looking fresher for much longer

Switch to A Less Expensive Detergent– It may seem like a no-brainer, but switching detergents to one that is more wallet-friendly will save you oodles of money. Most brand-name detergents  cost family around $.30-.33 per load, but you can still have brand-name detergent at only $.15 a load if you switched to Cheer brightCLEAN™ detergent.That means each time you do a load of laundry, you can put $.15 back in your pocket to put towards all those back-to-school supplies. Hurray for savings!

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I don’t want to just talk about how much you will save by using Cheer brightCLEAN™ detergent, I actually want to give it to you and save you that expense for an entire year! Cheer brightCLEAN™ detergent has graciously offered to give to one of our lucky readers a year’s supply of laundry detergent. Imagine not having to pay for detergent for an entire year and what you could do with that money.

At only $.15 a load though, it is great to know that if you need to buy it, that this detergent is very budget-friendly and they offer different (including unscented) varieties to choose from! It is a product that I am using for my own family and one that I would love to share with you! The best part though is that it will remove the day’s dinginess from your clothing and brighten the clothes you already have at a fraction of the price. Who wouldn’t want a little of that in their life…or perhaps, a year’s worth of that!

Today we are offering one lucky reader a year’s supply of Cheer brightCLEAN™ Detergent to kick off your back-to-school year right!

Leave one comment for each item that you complete to enter:

• First Entry: Leave a comment and let us know one tip you would like to implement in your house for saving during this back-to-school season.
• Additional Entry: Let us know you are a fan of MomAdvice and join the MomAdvice.com Fan Club today on Facebook.
• Additonal Entry: Follow me on Twitter and get an early scoop on all of our giveaways and articles that we are formulating for the year!
• Additional Entries: Subscribe to my feeds and never miss another thing on our site again! We have a landing page where it makes it easy to subscribe to our blogs. For each one you subscribe to, leave one additional comment.

One winner, chosen at random, will receive a year’s supply of Cheer brightCLEAN™ Detergent . Please submit your entries by Tuesday (09/07) at 8PM EST.  Our winner will be drawn at random. Good luck, everyone!

I am a spokesperson for Cheer brightCLEAN™ Detergent and have a relationship with the company. The thoughts and opinions expressed will always be honest and heartfelt and no reflection on receiving samples from the company.  We promise to always do our best to give away products to our readers because it is always better to give than to receive!  Want to know more about how things are handled here at MomAdvice? Be sure to read our Disclaimer which clearly states how things work and know that we will always offer only the best content for our readers.