Does Rewashing Ziploc Bags Really Save You Money?

Mal writes in:

I cherished your publish about how little you save by not flushing. You should do the exact same factor about your favored bugaboo, rewashing Ziploc bags!

Rewashing Ziploc bags is some thing that I’ve joked about becoming a frugality “action as nicely far” because the first days of The Easy Dollar. In March 2009, I totally prepared a publish on this very topic, intending to present it in a very tongue-in-cheek style on April 1, 2009, but I by no means obtained about to posting it. Why? It merely study as nicely shut to becoming severe, as although I were strongly advocating rewashing Ziploc sandwich bags as a technique to turn out to be a millionaire.

However, I did do some real research into the topic to uncover out how much a individual could really save by rewashing Ziploc sandwich bags. Here’s what I discovered.

First of all, in experiments in our personal dishwasher, you can wash and re-use a single Ziploc sandwich bag 7 occasions, for a complete of eight makes use of, on average. I would verify this by seeing whether or not the sandwich bag would maintain liquid subsequent a thorough cleaning. I attempted a quantity of bags, with use counts ranging from two makes use of up to 1 bag that managed nineteen makes use of. The average, however, was eight makes use of per bag.

I also timed how lengthy it took to offer with every individual bag to properly clear and dry it. In purchase to get it clear and also get it appropriately dry, you have to pre-rinse the bag a bit, then cautiously spread it across as many dishwasher tines as it will match about. With some practice, I was in a position to get this procedure down to about twenty seconds a bag.

How much h2o and detergent is used to wash a bag? I could match eight bags on the leading rack of our dishwasher. In accordance to my calculations, the cost to run a complete ...