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The nation's gloomy economy with perpetually haunting prices at the pump continues to challenge consumers, demanding people to think outside the box and consider greener, more fiscally efficient alternatives. Resourceful, environmentally conscious and thrifty consumers alike are learning new ways to drive less, spend less and save more. And here at Daily Cents, we have come up with a couple of ways you can do all of the above where your laundry is concerned.

Eco Laundry Balls
Eco Laundry Balls replace traditional laundry detergent in your washing machine. They are simple to use, effective, and an economical way to care for your clothes, your washing machine, and your environment. Simply place Eco Laundry Balls in your wash instead of detergent and mineral salts unleash ionic cleaning power to deeply penetrate into clothing fibers to lift away dirt without fading bright colors. They are safe, hypoallergenic, and offer the perfect solution for babies, children and people with sensitive skin. The Eco Balls Laundry Kit is $59.95 and lasts up to 1,000 washes. If you are doing the math, that is about the same as 50 bottles of laundry detergent which would cost about $750.

Woolite Dry Cleaner’s Secret
With inflation pushing prices to all-time highs, the latte that mysteriously left its mark on your blouse Monday morning now has easier, less expensive alternatives than the usual trip to the dry cleaners. Woolite Dry Cleaner’s Secret not only cleans your best garments, but also saves you money and improves your carbon footprint by keeping your car off the road, decreasing the frequency of your trips to the good ol' dry cleaner. Americans spend over $9 billion each year on dry cleaning. Many items traditionally taken to the cleaners can be safely cleaned and refreshed with the Woolite Dry Cleaner's Secret at home including acetates, cashmere, cotton, linen, ramie, rayon, silk, synthetics and wool. Woolite Dry Cleaner's Secret is non-toxic and safe for any gas or electric dryer.

So make both the world and your wallet a little greener next time you need to do laundry!

So last week, we did an interesting experiment at Daily Cents. After a discussion about keeping your car clean, we decided to see if it is possible to clean your car yourself and have it look as good as it does when it comes back from getting detailed. There were many nay-sayers in the group (we will call them Team Spend-Money-Like-You-Hate-It) who said it was worth the $100 it generally costs to get your car detailed. However, Jane Dough, our chief money-saver (and captain of Team Spendthrift) was convinced that she could engineer a professional do-it-yourself job for much less than $100. Game on....

Team Spend-Money took their vehicle to the detailer ($100) and then came back and propped their feet up while Jane and the girls got busy. 

Finding lost money may be the stuff of legends, urban and otherwise, but you’d be surprised how many people have misplaced (or forgotten) that they had a savings accounts, purchased stock and/or had made deposits for utilities.

But consumers Google “lost money” at their peril -- the search results will be rife with scamsters, phishers and “services” that will charge you for searches that can be done free -- if you know where to go.

If you think you may have misplaced an account or two (or even if you don’t, it doesn’t hurt -- or cost -- to look), let your mouse do the walking to MissingMoney.org, a service of the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA).

Just because Microsoft with its Microsoft Office is the biggest purveyor (some might say enablers) of communication software, doesn’t mean they are the only game in town.

Yep, the products from the merry band of coders in Redmond are not the only way, alternatives are available -- and for free. Some of them are downloadable, and some of them are web-based, but all of them can do much the same thing (and sometimes more) as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The leading free competitor to MS Office is from OpenOffice.org. It’s a free, downloadable software suite for both PC Windows and Mac OSX platforms with programs for word processing, spreadsheets, database manipulation and presentation. Oh, and the software in OpenOffice.org enables you open PDF files without a plug-in or commercial add-on, something MS Office can’t do.