Way to Save #141: Stop Being So Clean

Americans can be obsessive when it comes to cleaning our clothes. Result? High dry-cleaning bills, high utility bills and high clothing bills. Nobody’s suggesting you should use body odor to cull your circle of friends, but the fact is that many items, especially the expensive-to-dry-clean-kind can often be worn more before we have them cleaned. Talk to a haberdasher and they’ll tell you that a quality men’s suit should be dry-cleaned as infrequently as possible for longer life. They’d rather see you brush them clean than exposing them to the trauma of a dry-cleaner.