When hubby and I first got married, we were broke. As in ramen started looking expensive broke. He was in nursing school, I was in physical therapy school. We were living off of savings, working odd jobs during school breaks to bring in a little money, and selling things online. It was rough.
Anyway I could find to pinch a penny, I was determined to do so. Through that time, I learned a lot of crazy ways to help lower our household bills and I still use those techniques today.
Did you know...?
more than half of the energy consumption in a house is on heating and air conditioning?
Water heating, lighting, and refrigeration make up nearly a third of household energy consumption
Televisions, cooking appliances, washers and dryers, and consumer electronics (computers, laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles) make up 21% of electric use
Houses in the Northeast United States average less energy consumption, while the South consumes the most
Any change in your electric consumption will make an impact on your utility bill, but tackling the top users will give you the most bang for your buck. So let's take the top four culprits and see how I lowered our monthly bills by nearly 50%!
1. Air conditioning
You guys, I lived in Florida when I started tackling my electric bill. If your air conditioning goes out in Florida, it is considered an emergency. I mean that literally. Ours went out one summer and the house went over 90 degrees! I used that opportunity to set out tons of ciabatta bread to rise. The house was hot but it smelled delicious!
So trying to lower this part of the bill was brutal.
First step, don't take the set-it-and-forget-it approach. If you have a smart thermostat, use the programming to change the temperature at different times of the day.
If you don't have a smart thermostat, get into the habit of changing the thermostat at different times of the day. For me, I started by setting the temperature one degree up in the summer and one degree lower in the winter.
Use curtains, blinds, or black out curtains. Take the few extra seconds to close them during the hottest part of the day. During winter, open them up to let the sun in.
Baby girl's room just got these beautiful curtains. They aren't black out because she is afraid of the dark, but they make her room so light and open feeling. I just adore them.
My office got fitted with these new black out curtains. Living in North Carolina now, I found inspiration in our beautiful wooded backyard and the dozens of native birds that visit our porch every day. I felt these branch curtains brought the outdoors inside.
2. Water heater
I didn't actually do anything to the water heater itself, but I became substantially more aware of the hot water I was using. My thought was if the hot water heater had to work harder, my bill would go up.
I never, ever wash my clothes on hot anymore. I find there is no difference in how clean they get,
I looooooove hot showers. The kind of hot showers that can probably melt a layer of skin off. I was not willing to give that up. But that may be something you are willing to! Try timing your showers to take shorter ones or shut the water off when you are washing and scrubbing. I definitely do this during the hot summer months. No need to have water running when I'm not rinsing.
3. Refrigerator
You really shouldn't mess with the temperature of your fridge too much. But there are things you can do to make it work optimally. And the less it has to work, the more energy efficient it is.
Do you know what the correct temperature of your fridge and freezer should be? Yeah, me either.
I decided I really didn't know how my refrigerator was supposed to work, so I wrote an entire article on maintaining your fridge properly. See the article here!
The most important take away was the fridge should be set to 37 degrees F and the freezer should be set to 0 degree F. Both sections should be about 2/3 of the way full. This allows enough air to flow around food and keep them properly chilled. Less than that, and the fridge has to work harder to keep it cold. More than that, and there's a chance your food won't stay cold enough.
4. Clothes dryer
Go old school and line dry your clothes!
Guys, it really is this simple. When I seriously trying to lower our bills, I line dried everything! And I saw our bill go done substantially in one month. Using the dryer not only uses energy, it also heats your house which means the air conditioining is working harder. It's a double whammy.
I'm using "line drying" as a generic term. I didn't literally have a clothes line. But what I did have was a laundry room with a shelf, hangers, and a second bathroom with a shower curtain rod. I would put all of my clothes I normally hang up straight from the washing machine onto the hangers and I would hang them up in the laundry room. The other clothes would get draped over the curtain rod in the spare bathroom.
Reminder: it is super hot in Florida. You better believe I used that as my clothes dryer. Sheets, towels, blankets, pants, shorts...they all got put outside. I simply laid them on top of the patio furniture and waited until they were dry. Sometimes I throw them in the dryer on the air cycle with my wool dryer ball to fluff them up. Usually, they just got shoved into the laundry basket to be dealt with at a later time.
During the winter in North Carolina, it is definitely too cold to hang clothes outside. I happen to have a baby play pen that baby girl no longer needs, so I set that up in our bathtub and hang clothes on it. I'm hoping the extra bit of evaporating water might help keep the humidity up a bit too.
So there you have it! These are 4 easy ways to start lowering your monthly utility bill without a lot of extra work. The first few months I did these, I was amazed with how much money I saved. Hubby and I have good jobs now and aren't surviving on ramen anymore, but I still love the challenge of saving money where I can (especially if it is good for the environment), so I still do all of these tips to this day.
Resources:
U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2015, Residential energy consumption survey, from https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php
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