Saving Money Around Your Home: Saving Money Behind The Scenes

You can save a lot of money behind the scenes at your home. All you have to do is distinguish between public facing household expenditures and private facing household expenditures.

• Have you ever noticed how the landscaping around your apartment complex is nicest at the entrance and near the demo units? 
• Have you noticed how the buildings often have a brick facade in the front, but cheap vinyl siding around back? 

It's not surprising. Businesses want to put their best foot forward towards potential customers. However, they control costs by saving money behind the scenes in less visible areas. In your life, you can do the exact same thing.
When you examine your personal spending, you can also spend more money to put your best foot forward and less money on private facing behind the scenes expenses. When it comes to spending money on your home, it makes sense to buy nice comfortable furniture. You'll use it every day and guests will see it. However. no rational person will ever judge you by the brand of toilet cleaner you use. That is one reason that I like to buy basic cleaning supplies and cleaners at dollar stores like Dollar Tree. There is only one caveat: each product has to work.

No one can see and no one would care that we use a wide variety of Dollar Tree toilet cleaners, glass cleaners, multi-surface cleaners, and dish washing soaps. We also like Dollar store scrub brushes and sponges. If we use a national brand name product, we use it because it has proven itself to work better on an important function than any generic substitute. For example, when funds are tight, we will use Sunlight brand dish washing detergent from Dollar Tree. But, when funds are available, we prefer to use Cascade because the results are visibly better. Similarly, we've tried various store brand laundry detergents, but we usually return to Tide.

Behind the scenes in our home, we use Ajax dish washing soap from Dollar Tree on the few pots and pans that need to be hand washed. For kitchen counter and table surfaces, Dollar Tree offers Spic and Span Multi-Surface cleaner. In the bathrooms, we use Dollar Tree's Jonny Fresh toilet bowl cleaner and Home Store Bathroom Cleaner. The Home Store Bathroom Cleaner is a close substitute for Scrubbing Bubbles. We even use Dollar Tree toilet paper. When we are done, we use SoftSoap hand soap from Dollar Tree. If it is allergy season, we use Scott brand tissues from our Dollar Tree, too. Unless they read this article or snoop beneath the counters, people visiting our apartment won't know what brands of cleaners we use or where we got them. However, my wife and I can predict our budget for cleaning products because everything is $1.


Dollar Tree is great for controlling your cash flow with predictable pricing. However, if you have more storage space or a larger family, you may achieve better savings on a cost-per-unit basis by making bulk purchases from a warehouse store. The key is to minimize your spending on basic behind-the-scenes household supplies that aren't visible to the public. Even when you go out in public, no one will know that you used Barbasol shaving cream from Dollar Tree.