This is a project we’ve been working on for five years or so: reducing our electricity usage. This reduces our bill, first and foremost. It also reduces our carbon footprint, saving the earth a little bit. There is no downside to conserving electricity. There is literally no reason not to. It’s a great minimalist activity. It’s also kind of fun. We are always waiting with anticipation to see our newest bill, to see if we’re winning or not. We judge winning based on our electric bill for the same month in the previous year. For example, if our electric usage for January 2018 is less than it was for January 2017, we’re winning. You don’t have to keep old bills to do this. Your electricity company probably has a website where you can log in and see your past usage for a certain number of years. Ours goes back to 2012, so we can see graphs of our usage over the 12 month period and compare it to what’s current. Look yours up and see what it’s like. Have you been using more energy recently, or less?
This is an ongoing project with a lot of little details. Looking over this long list won’t seem very minimalist, but a lot of these are one-time tasks that you’ll never have to do again unless you move to a new house. Once they’re done, they’re done. Others are once-a-year tasks, while a few are behavior modifications (like turning off light switches or taking shorter showers). You can’t do them all at once unless you’re not broke, so take a look over the list and see which ones you can mark off right now. Then, come back to this post in a few weeks and see what else you can accomplish. Keep an eye on your bill, so you’ll see the immediate benefits.
Turn off the lights: This one is an easy behavior modification. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Turn off the lights when you leave the house. Yes, even the porch light. It might give you the illusion of security, but trust me: if a burglar wants to get into your house, a porch light won’t stop them. Turn it off. If you really feel unsafe without it, get a solar motion-sensor light. Sleep your computer, too. If you aren’t already in the habit, start today. Turn lights off.
Replace all your bulbs with LED bulbs: this is an investment up front, but with a potentially significant payoff. As your incandescent or CFL bulbs begin to die, go ahead and replace them one at a time with good quality LED light bulbs. They use a fraction of the electricity and will last for years and years. You’ll save on bulb replacements and on electricity usage. Now, that doesn’t mean you can leave them on all the time. Continue turning off lights when you leave the room, even if they are LED ones.
Take shorter showers: you are paying to heat that water. Don’t empty the tank every time you shower. Five minutes is all you need. You’ll save water, too.
Insulate everything: This is the one that will make the most difference, as climate control is the biggest energy drain in almost every house. Add weather stripping, caulk and insulation to every nook and cranny you can find. This will keep your house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, reducing A/C costs year round. Be creative with canned spray foam. Use paintable caulk to fill in cracks and then hide them. Buy some cheap light switch/outlet gaskets, they only cost a few cents each and pay for themselves. Get a fiberglass blanket for your water heater. Inspect your windows carefully and eliminate any gaps. If you have a nice financial windfall and you own your house, replacing windows can make a huge difference to your bills.
Cover your windows: Even if you have newish windows, and especially if you don’t, invest in heavy thermal curtains or blackout curtains. These will block UV light in summer, keeping your house a few degrees cooler. You can still open them to let light in, but keep the ones on the side of the house the sun is shining on closed. In winter, they are heavy enough to block out some of the cold. Open them during the day to let sunlight warm your house, then shut them tight when the sun goes down. Get some window kits and cover your windows with the plastic. If you can’t find any, get some cheap clear shower curtains from the dollar store and nail them up underneath your curtains. Tape the edges with masking tape. This will trap the cold air away, and you can take them down in the spring.
Maintain your appliances: Have your furnace and a/c inspected and tuned up annually. Clean your fridge coils. If you use your dryer, and you shouldn’t if you can help it, make sure the lint trap and vent hose are clear. An appliance that isn’t running efficiently uses more electricity than necessary and can even be a fire hazard. Invest in the most energy efficient ones you can afford. If you’re broke like us, keep using the ones you have until they just won’t go anymore.
Don’t use your dryer: Clothes dryers, as we’ve said, are a frivolous waste of electricity. Air dries things for free. Hang your clothes out in the sun, or in your house if it’s rainy or below freezing outside. This will be a not-insignificant savings. You’ll probably see a drop of 20 bucks on your bill if you stop completely.
Use ceiling fans properly: In summer, ceiling fans should rotate counterclockwise on a high speed. Fans don’t cool the air, but they make us feel cooler by the process of evaporation. In the summer, use them to full advantage. In the winter, they should run clockwise on the lowest setting. Hot air rises, so this will gently blow the warmer air down to your level. If you aren’t in a room, turn the ceiling fan off just as you would a light.
Use electric blankets in winter: These only use a few watts and you’ll stay super cozy. Or at least, your dog will when he steals it.
Air dry your dishes: just like the clothes dryer, letting your dishwasher dry your dishes is wasteful. If you use the dishwasher, put it on air dry. If yours is a bajillion years old and doesn’t have that setting, just stop it after the wash cycle and open the door so your dishes can dry.
Check your thermostat: In the summer, keep it as warm as you possibly can stand. For us this is about 78 degrees. Yes, really. You won’t die. Wear some shorts, use your ceiling fans. Take a cool shower. You’ll be fine. In winter avoid using your furnace unless it’s very cold. We had planned to keep ours set to around 60 degrees, until we figured out that it was broken. Instead we are using electric space heaters to heat only the room we are in at the time. If you do use your furnace, keep it set as cool as you can stand and bundle up against the chill. Use electric blankets on your bed to stay toasty at night, they use only a few watts and will keep you warmer than if you try to heat the surrounding air anyway.
Find energy vampires: these are devices that use standby power when they are off. The clock on your microwave, for example. Unplug that shit. That’s wasted money. Your cable box, tv and dvd player probably do too; put those on a power strip and turn it off when you’re done watching. We actually unplug all our crap. Our washer and dryer are unplugged right now. So are the tv and Fire Stick, the microwave, the crock pot, and the lamp in the living room. You don’t have to be crazy like us, but if you think a device is using power when it’s off, even if it’s just to keep a little blinking light on, unplug it.
Get rid of hair dryers and curling irons: your hair will dry. These things waste energy and are also fire and burn hazards. We remember having our grandma burn the crap out of our head with a big old 70’s hair dryer when we were a kid (in the 90’s, btw). We’d complain that it was too hot, she’d ignore us, and two days later our scalp would start peeling. These things are dangerous. If you want curly hair, get a set of sponge curlers. They were good enough for grandma and they’re good enough for you.
Use the microwave: as much as possible, cook things in the microwave instead of on the stove or in the oven. The microwave uses the least electricity of these.
Get rid of scented plug ins: throw that crap away. Get some scented candles. Done.
Open your blinds and curtains during the day: the sun provides plenty of light, so you shouldn’t need to turn on lights until after dark. Open up your blinds to let the sunlight in so you can see, and so it can warm your house in winter. In summer, close the blinds/curtains on the side of the house where the sun is, to block out the extra heat.
Open your windows in the evening in the summer: When it’s hot during the day, keep the windows shut and the curtains pulled, at least on the side where the sun is shining in. After the sun goes down, if it’s cooler outside than inside, open your windows and doors to let the cool night air in. Shut them before the sun comes up and trap the nice cool air inside. It’ll stay cool for a few hours before you have to turn the A/C on. We do not recommend sleeping with your door open, ftr. If you’ve got mosquitoes, get screens.
Trap your desired temperature: If you’ve got open doorways between rooms where there aren’t actual doors, hang curtains or blankets there to keep your climate controlled air from escaping into other parts of the house. We use clear shower curtains in winter to trap heat in our living room. We don’t need to heat the kitchen if we aren’t in the kitchen, right? You can do this with air conditioning too if you’ve got a window unit. If you aren’t using central but you still have air registers in your house, cover them with plastic. Do not cover air registers in unused rooms if you are using the central, this is bad for your unit and duct work. Just let them blow.
Dress for the season: if it’s 90 degrees outside, wear shorts and a tank top and put your thermostat on 78. If it’s 10 degrees outside, bundle up in layers and wool socks and put your thermostat on 60. You will be fine. You will acclimate, even. We promise.
Wash your clothes in cold water: heating water uses electricity. Unless you’re washing something that’s very greasy, use cold water.
Use the eco settings on everything: Your computer probably has this, so does your tv. Use this setting on every device that offers it.
Shade your roof: with deciduous trees. That is, ones that lose their leaves in the winter. You gain a lot of heat from the sun shining directly on your roof in the summer, so you want it to be shaded by trees so your house stays a little cooler. In winter you want that extra warmth hitting your house, though. If you don’t already have trees growing this can be a very long-term project. If you own the property, do some research on the subject and plant some good, hardy trees in strategic locations.
Shade your A/C: air conditioning is by far the biggest energy hog in your house. It’ll run more efficiently if it’s not in direct sunlight, so plant some shade trees.
Use space heaters: Leave your furnace off and use space heaters to heat only the room you are in, rather than the whole house. (Make sure your pipes are insulated first.) This will save lots of energy. If, however, you do need to heat the whole house, do not use space heaters to do so. Not only will you have a ridiculous bill, you’ll likely burn your house down.
(Yeah that’s our furniture-free bedroom, but that’s another post!
Turn off the furnace/air conditioner when you are away: There’s a myth that says it takes more energy to heat your house up if it’s gotten cold than if you just leave the heat running constantly. This is 100% false. If you leave, turn everything off. Even if you’re gone for eight hours for work, your house isn’t likely to be freezing inside when you get back. It’ll heat back up within twenty minutes or so, and it won’t use more electricity that way. So turn it off when you leave.
Hibernate in winter: When the weather’s cold, pick one room to heat and stay in there rather than moving around. If you’ve got a family your body heat will keep the room even warmer. You can play board games or do puzzles. We hibernate in our bedroom during winter and mostly abandon the rest of the house. We venture out occasionally for food or to pee, but we come back quickly.
There are other things you can do, but these are the ones we’ve found that make the most difference. We’ll post results as we try new things so everyone can see. Shaving money off our utility bill has made the most difference to our finances recently. When we first moved here we got a $500 electric bill for August, the hottest month here. We’d reduced that to $57 by November. Now that it’s cold and we’ve been using space heaters instead of the fire, we’re up to $85 or so. If we can stay under $100 for the rest of the winter that’ll be significant.
You can make a difference right now. Go turn something off.
Links: Mr. Electricity, Reduce your carbon footprint
