#savingenergy

This is a topic near and dear to our hearts.  We love saving electricity.  Also, we love figuring out how generations past got along without modern amenities like central heat and on-demand hot water. Maybe we’re just history nerds, maybe we have too much morbid curiosity.  Anyway. 

We here at Brokest Minimalist are not about deprivation.  However, we are about 1) simplifying life 2) saving the earth and 3) helping out our fellow peeps.  We’re too broke to help anyone out financially, however we are here today to give you the benefit of our experience.

It’s time to turn your thermostat down!  Put it on 55 and use the following tips to stay cozy.  Now, don’t get us wrong.  We like to stay warm.  But there are cheaper ways to do it than by cranking up the gas, so let’s walk through a few.  Also, these are good skills to have for times when you live in houses without central heat or are too broke to run it or, like us, your furnace has been broken for two years and you’re too damn broke to get it fixed.  BEGIN:

Get up during the day and move.  This may go without saying for most, but for those of us who suffer from depression or SAD, our sleep cycles may be out of whack.  Fix them, to the best of your ability.  You want to be up and about during the daytime, when the sun is shining. Try to be up by midmorning and moving around.  A hot shower is a great way to warm up and wake yourself up.  If you don’t have to work, at least do some chores or some exercise.  Rake some leaves, mop your floors.  Get moving, keep your circulation going.  The human body is great at warming itself if you give it a chance.

Dress in layers.  This takes some practice to not feel stiff and uncomfortable, but it’s worth doing. Buy a few sets of thermal underwear.  Spring for the big brands if you can afford it, like real Under Armour.  Cheap waffle weave thermals are scratchy and uncomfortable.  On top of that you want a t-shirt, then a fuzzy sweater.  If you’re lounging around at home, put a cozy hoodie on top of that, or even a bathrobe.  Pajama bottoms and sweatpants are great over some thermal bottoms.  Wear thick wool socks, don’t go barefoot.  Hats and scarves are things too. Fingerless gloves will help keep you cozy while browsing the web or gaming.

Open your blinds/curtains and let the sun warm your house.  That’s what they did in the days before electric heat. This one is twofold, as well. Our grandmas used to say that people who sat around in the dark got depressed, and the folk wisdom wasn’t wrong.  Vitamin D deficiency is strongly linked to depression and anxiety.  So open up those windows and let that fresh UV light into your home! When the sun goes down, cover the windows back up to avoid drafts.  You can use plastic film to cover the windows if they are old or drafty.  Even a clear shower curtain taped over it will make a difference.  Invest in heavier drapes if you can.  Those will help block out extra light in the summer, too.  Two birds, one stone.

Add insulation and weather stripping. These are fairly cheap and make a big difference.  You may think you have enough, but we’d wager that you can add more.  Check around doors and windows, check for cracks in your fireplace, gaps in your baseboards, etc.  If you have a fireplace, make sure your damper is shut tight unless you have a fire or active coals in there.  Canned spray foam is a great tool, but have a plan for it before you start spraying because it will clog up quickly if you put it down for a few minutes.  Get a roll of plastic sheeting and tape it over your windows, or buy those kits that you use to shrink wrap them with a hair dryer.  Failing that, even thrift store blankets nailed up under your curtains/blinds can knock some chill off.

Learn to light your fireplace, if you have one.  We resisted this, but you have to just buckle down and do it.  Invest in a load of well-seasoned firewood and learn to build a good hot fire for when you are home.  It’s not an efficient way to heat an entire house, but it will raise the temperature a few degrees and the coals will keep burning for hours, putting off heat.  Plus, it’s cozy and romantic.  If you’re a city kid like we are, doing it for the first time can be scary.  You might burn yourself.  You might fill your house with smoke.  Just go ahead and try it, you’ll be glad you did and you’ll have a decent backup plan in case of power outage. Plus, it smells nice.  Have your chimney cleaned by a professional yearly if you do this often.

Heat yourself, not the whole house. Use electric blankets, mattress pads, and heating pads to keep yourself warm instead of the surrounding air. Dress in layers, wear thick fuzzy socks, and learn to love your electric blanket.  Use it safely: no extension cords, unplug it when you leave the room.  These use only a few watts and can create a delicious cocoon of warmth for you even in a chilly room.  Failing that, get a hot water bottle.

Heat one room, not the whole house. Invest in a small, safe space heater and use it to heat only the room you are in.  If you have to hibernate in your bedroom for most of the winter, then do it.  Your utility bill will be much cheaper for heating just one room than for turning on the central heat and wasting heat on rooms you aren’t in.  Stick it in your bathroom 30 minutes before you shower, then bring it with you afterwards.  If you have open doorways, cover them with curtains or sheets to keep the heat in the room you are in.

Use your ceiling fans. This may seem counterintuitive, but run your ceiling fans on a low speed in a clockwise direction.  Heat rises, and you want the fan to gently move that warmer air from the ceiling back down to you.

Add blankets to your bed, putting a sheet on top of your bedspread.  Don’t ask us why it works, but it does.  Our guess is that the denser weave of the sheet traps more air between it and the bedspread than it would between itself and another sheet.  Wear pajamas and socks, don’t try to be one of those people who sleeps naked while it’s 10 degrees outside.  We currently have a bedspread, covered by a thermal blanket, covered by a sheet.  Combined with our electric mattress pad, we are super cozy even in the dead of winter.  This is important.  We don’t know about everyone, but we don’t fall asleep if we’re cold.

Cook or bake.  This will add some heat and moisture to your house. In fact, you can put a pot of water on the stove with a slice of lemon or a shake of ground cinnamon in it to boil and add quite a lot of warmth.  It’s a great natural air freshener.  Eat hot foods and drink hot chocolate or tea.

Keep your feet, hands and ears warm. If your feet are cold, you will feel cold.  Period.  Keep thick socks on around the house, keep your circulation going by moving around. If you’re feeling chilly, go wash your hands in hot water for two minutes; the heated blood from your hands will circulate and warm you.  Keep your ears covered by a hat.

Cover air registers you aren’t using to prevent drafts.  Tape plastic over them, or stick a piece of newspaper or cardboard behind them.  Take this off before you turn the heat on.  Please do not cover registers in unused rooms if you are going to use the heat!  Your furnace was designed to operate at a certain amount of air pressure, and covering a register can alter that and cause the unit to work harder, increasing your electrical consumption and reducing the machine’s lifespan.  Seriously, remember to take all covers off before you use your central heat.

Move your bed: Keep it away from outside walls and as far away from windows as possible.  Also, DIY yourself a canopy to help trap your body heat in.

You will acclimate, believe it or not. We haven’t used our central heat all winter, but now if the house gets over 60 degrees or so we start to feel too warm.  This was surprising, but it’s true.  Mankind has lived without benefit of electric or gas heat for most of history, relying on clothing, fire and body heat to survive winters even in the harshest of climates.  

Some of this doesn’t sound very minimalist, but minimalism isn’t all about sitting around in a white room meditating.  It’s about having the least you need to get by, and if you’re short on cash then these tips will save your electric bill and reduce your carbon footprint without you having to suffer too much.  In addition, you’ll reduce your risk of carbon monoxide poisoning by not using gas heat.  We don’t know about you, but both of those things are stress reducers for us.Please note again that minimalism isn’t about deprivation.  If you’ve done all of this and are still uncomfortable, please turn on your heat.  If you are elderly or ill and the cold exacerbates your condition, please turn on your heat.  Contact your local utility department for information on outreach programs that will help you pay your bills.  If you have a neighbor who you suspect has no heat, please check on them.  We are all on this planet together.  

Please be careful with fires and space heaters!  Keep flammable objects more than 3 feet away, do not store your firewood next to your fireplace, and never use an extension cord with a heating device.  Check the batteries in your smoke detectors and stay warm everybody!

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.  

So, it’s cold.  We like to hang our laundry out to dry to save electricity, but the days are short and overcast.  Well-wrung clothes will dry in direct sunlight even if it’s near freezing out, but that sunlight is crucial.  If it’s a cloudy day, or if your clothes are hanging in the shade, they are just as likely to freeze as they are to dry.

Our solution is to migrate the clothesline indoors to our bedroom.  In summer, spring and fall we maintain a furniture-free bedroom.  We have a bed, a lamp, and that’s it.  We have a nightstand, on and off.  In winter we move a chair in and basically live in the bedroom, to conserve electricity.  It may sound spartan, but it’s pretty cozy.  When you were a kid, did you ever camp in the living room or make a blanket fort?  It’s like that.  

So, we strung up a temporary line from one window to another in our bedroom, and hang the clothes there overnight.  We moved the clotheshorse, too.  Between the space heater (at a safe distance) and the ceiling fan, the clothes and towels dry just as quickly as if they were outside on a nice day, and it makes the whole room smell like laundry!

If you’re washing your sheets they will dry in a reasonable time on a temporary line in a heated room, however a heavy bedspread will likely stay wet for a long, long time.  Go ahead and put it in the dryer if you have to, but beware of overdrying or you’ll wind up with a static problem.

For more, see our post about frugal laundry.

Trong nhịp sống hối hả ngày nay, "sống xanh" không chỉ là một trào lưu mà đã trở thành lối sống cần thiết cho mỗi người. Sống xanh đơn giản là cách chúng ta sử dụng tài nguyên tiết kiệm, giảm thiểu rác thải, ưu tiên sản phẩm thân thiện môi trường và duy trì những thói quen lành mạnh giúp bảo vệ Trái Đất.

Điều tuyệt vời là lối sống này không hề xa vời. Chỉ từ những việc nhỏ như tắt đèn khi ra khỏi phòng, sử dụng túi vải thay cho túi nilon, phân loại rác hay đi bộ nhiều hơn, bạn đã góp phần tạo nên một môi trường trong lành hơn. Không chỉ bảo vệ hành tinh, sống xanh còn giúp chúng ta cải thiện sức khỏe, tinh thần, tiết kiệm chi phí và lan tỏa những giá trị tích cực đến cộng đồng.

Tuy nhiên, thực hành sống xanh cũng gặp không ít thách thức: từ thói quen lâu năm khó thay đổi, chi phí sản phẩm xanh cao, cho đến sự thiếu hỗ trợ từ hạ tầng. Nhưng từng bước nhỏ vẫn có thể tạo nên sự thay đổi lớn, đặc biệt khi nhiều người cùng chung tay.

✨ Bạn muốn bắt đầu sống xanh ngay hôm nay nhưng chưa biết nên bắt đầu từ đâu? Hãy cùng Made4Home tìm hiểu chi tiết khái niệm, lợi ích và cách áp dụng sống xanh hàng ngày trong bài viết đầy đủ tại đây

Learn how to save energy effectively with these five maintenance strategies, optimizing equipment and reducing energy waste.

Read More: https://cmmssoftware.leantransitionsolutions.com/software-blogs-details/5-Ways-to-Conserve-Energy-with-Good-Maintenance