Ok, ok you can stop your chants of more, more from your freaky sister. (or weirdo as my children affectionately call me)
I like lists so, here are a few things we do, (or I do ) that I think reduce our electric and propane use, I really have no ideas about gas for the car except not drive as much, and Ive read that the rule should be walk-1 mile and under/ride bike 5miles and under/public transportation for longer/car last resort...but I don't follow this because I cant ride my bike 5 miles up hill to work 2xs a day. ok...
....most of our lights in the house
are 5watt, the others are florescent.
....we open the windows at night and close them and the curtains during the
day to keep out the heat
....I haven't had an oven for 5 years, I do all my cooking and baking in an
electric frying pan and the crock pot, (breads cakes,and cookies can be
made in the electric frying pan.)It uses a lot less energy to heat up a small
frying pan than it does to heat up a whole oven, I even do a turkey breast
in the crock pot for thanksgiving)
....We use a coffee press for our coffee(we heat up the water in an electric
teakettle, it takes less than 2 min, then if we don't drink all the coffee, we
put it in a thermos to keep it warm, uses a lot less electric than a coffee pot)
.... We don't have a washer or dryer, so laundry gets done in the bathtub
and hung on the line when the weather is nice. (if we need something dry
over night we hang it over one of our fans)
.... Water can be saved by washing clothes, flushing toilets, and watering plants
with water saved in the tub from showers(the water is not that dirty unless of
coarse you've been rolling in the mud on working down on the farm)I'll admit,
I do this, but it really doesn't make a difference for us because we don't pay for water
....I take cold showers, saves propane, tough for the first week but you get used to it
after that ,you also save water, because you really don't want to be in there for more
than 5 minutes or so.
....We found a wood stove for cheap on craigs list it had only been used 3mths, because
there is no way we can pay for propane this year , but last winter when our furnace broke
we closed off the house and just had 2bedrooms and a bathroom, not too hard to do when
you do all of your cooking in a crock pot or electric frying pan and then we heated with 2
small electric heaters. Electric was cheaper than propane
....With the furnace we kept the heat at 55 kind of cold, but wearing extra sweaters, and
socks helps, at night we all have a hot water bottle in bed, we just use pop bottles with hot
water.
....I cant think of anything else we do except turn off the lights and use daylight
Maybe next ill write about shopping and cooking like a cheapo.
SLR
