Dec 17 2008
AN EASY WAY TO REDUCE UTILITY COSTS.
Now is the time to pinch those pennies. It’s Christmas time and your out scrambling for those last minute gifts. Some of you will be using your credit cards while others will only pay cash. You have dinner parties to plan for, gift wrapping to do and millions of other little things. Do you find your home very busy and people coming and going all the time? Are the lights being left on later then usual?
I find the sun is setting before 5 pm and that means bigger utility bills. Did you know by switching to those funny looking spiral light bulbs that you will reduce your hydro bill by about twenty dollars in one month? We did and I was amazed at the difference in price. We also got two fish tanks with heaters and pumps so the bill went up about thirty dollars. The biggest changes we made were our appliances. Older fridge and stove would use about 4 amps of service now with my new appliances each only using 1 amp of service will cut the bill in half for those two items alone. My dishwasher is thirty years old so I won’t use it very much. I hope to purchase a newer one in the future.
I’ve also stopped doing the dishes everyday. I fill the sink full then do a load of dishes. This reduced my gas bill by about fifteen dollars! I was shocked at how many times I could shower in a day. I’ve since done most of my showering at the gym or I’ll do the sponge bath thing at home. It’s cold half the time and I don’t feel like getting wet anyways.
As for laundry, I found it cheaper to go to the laundromat and use those triple loaders. I do about twelve loads of wash once a month and it costs me from twenty to forty dollars depending on how many loads and how many dryers I use. I find in the winter with more sweaters and jeans that the cost has doubled from my usual twenty dollars to wash and dry everything. I’m also washing more bedsheets and blankets as well. Winter months seem to be more expensive then summer. But then again I’m washing less towels now because we take less showers. In the summer I’d take a cold shower just to cool off when I didn’t want to run the air conditioner.
As for the air conditioner I would simply put it on one hour before bedtime and it would nicely cool our small bedroom down. The living room air conditioner would be off for half the day and I would put it on around 3 pm to have it cooled enough for supper time which would have been about six o’clock. We tend not to eat much at home in the summer for it being too hot and just not having the appetite and in the winter I’m prone to eat more hot meals so more cooking is involved. The good thing about cooking is that it will heat up the kitchen and living room since they are close together.
Making your family aware of leaving the lights on, putting blankets on the couch and wearing sweaters, socks and slippers in the winter time instead of shorts and t-shirts will save on your bills. It takes some getting used to but hey in this day and age a penny saved is a penny earned. You really only need the temperature to be around 20 degrees Celsius in the wintertime. If it’s like minus 20 outside then I would put it up to 22 Degrees Celsius instead. Some people like to turn the heat down to 18 degrees during the daytime this is fine unless you have pets. Our dog wears a t-shirt and sweater around the house and she no longer shivers. She has warm blankets on her bed which can be bought at the dollar store for a buck (baby blankets work great) and you can even get sweaters there too!
