With water and electricity bills continuing to soar and showing no signs of slowing down, many are looking for ways to save money wherever possible.
And while that might mean not buying a morning coffee or being more selective about how we approach our social lives – we can also save money by simply changing how we do some things at home.
Now, a TikTok from @costoflivingcrisistips has gone viral that’s making people reevaluate how they wash their dishes.
For those who don’t have the luxury of owning a dishwasher, doing it by hand is the only option.
And that, of course, uses a lot of water from the taps, and in turn, costs money.
That’s particularly true if you leave the tap running while washing up.
You might not think that has much of an impact on household bills, but the amount of water actually wasted is likely significant.
So, the hack on how to save money when washing up is actually pretty simple.
Once your food is cooked in the oven, place a baking dish of cold water inside the oven as it cools down.
A few minutes later, the warmed-up water can be used to help with the washing up, without having to use any from the tap.
The hack is so popular in fact that it’s racked up a staggering 780,000 views on the platform.
One writer at MyLondon decided to give it a go and was blown away by the outcome.
She cooked her lunch for 30 minutes at 200 degrees and then put a baking tray full of water inside as the oven cooled.
She waited three or four minutes before taking out the tray.
She said: “I could feel the heat radiating through my oven glove, so I was relieved to know that the water had been warmed up by the heat.
Using a little dribble of washing-up liquid inside my frying pan, I then poured the water into the sink and had previously blocked the drain with the plug.”
While she says there wasn’t a lot of water to work with, it was enough to wash the frying pan she’d used.
She adds: “There was barely anything left to wash up other crockery and utensils, which was a shame. Perhaps I should have invested in a bigger baking dish.”
The writer also says the water was more ‘lukewarm’ than hot – though admits she should have left the dish in the oven for longer.
There was, though, enough water to wash up and will have surely saved some money when compared to the cost of running the taps.
While MyLondon’s writer called the method ‘unusual’, she said using multiple trays to warm the water in the oven would be enough to do the washing-up in full.
In the comments, one person offered another benefit of using the TikToker’s method.
They wrote: “Leave the oven door open once you’ve finished cooking, it’ll help to heat the house.”
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