Save Money Every Day With These Thrifty Home Energy Tips
With just a few minor adjustments to your daily habits, you can start saving money on your home energy bills.
Free And Thrifty Home Energy Tips
Thrifty Home Energy Tip #1 - Turn Off The Lights
When you leave a room get in the habit of turning off the lights. If you see lights on - in a room that is not being used - turn them off. Start getting everyone in the household to turn off lights and you will already be on your way to energy savings.
Thrifty Home Energy Tip #2 - Turn Off Electronics
Many people think that booting up a computer or television takes more energy than just letting it run 24/7. This is not true. Comparatively it takes much less energy to turn on a device than to leave it running. So if you plan to be away from that device for an hour or more - turn it off.
Thrifty Home Energy Tip #3 - Use Power Strips
Have you heard of "phantom" energy use? This is when you have a device turned off but it still draws a small amount of energy. The way to prevent this from happening is to plug your devices and all the peripherals into a power strip and once you have turned off or powered down the device, turn off the power strip.
If we could start now teaching all of the next generation to do this one simple thing (out of habit) our energy consumption would be reduced by 5%.
Check out the Smart Power Strip from the folks at Gaiam.com.
Once on the site just type smart power strip into the search box located on the top right of the page.
Thrifty Home Energy Tip #4 - Close Vents In Unused Rooms
Heating or cooling unused rooms is a huge waste of energy and money. Close the doors in those unused rooms and shut the vents that are feeding them. This even applies to the bedrooms during the day. If need be - just go into the bedroom(s) an hour before bedtime and open the vents back up to get the room back to a livable temperature.
Thrifty Home Energy Tip #5 - Saving On The Laundry
Two tips here -
First - wash all your clothes in cold water. Just try it for one or two weeks and see if your clothes are getting as clean. There are even detergents now that are specifically for cold water washing.
Second - hang your clothes on a line instead of using the dryer. If you don't like how stiff or wrinkled they come in off the line, try drying them for the first 15 minutes and then hanging them out. Either way you are saving about 5% in energy use.
These tips will hopefully get you started on using less energy.
Now share your own tips with us. What do you and your family do to use less energy?
Give us all your free tips to start with. We will be posting a whole new list of energy saving tips that have a cost attached to them.
Tips from our readers:
AMANDA OF MAINE SAYS:
For those with electric hot water heaters--turn off the switch to it (in the breaker box) at night or when you'll be away from home. Our power bill has dropped $30-$40 a month doing this, even sporadically.
