It doesn’t matter if you have your own home or you live in a rented one, monthly bills are probably one of your biggest concerns.
It is not easy to think about electricity, gas bills, heating, landscaping, and air conditioning, and at the end of the month your bills may not be drastically higher, but at the end of the year you could be spending much more than you thought you would. Luckily, all this can change if you incorporate a few easy tips and tricks for energy and money saving into your everyday life.
No-Time Energy Savers
You can change a few simple things in your everyday life that are going to reduce your electricity bills drastically. For example, you could let your dishes air dry and not use your dishwasher’s drying cycle. They are going to dry anyway, and this is especially useful if you let them dry overnight. In the morning, you simply put them back on the shelves, and there you have it – you have saved some money in a blink of an eye. Whenever possible, air dry your clothes as well (windy weather helps a lot), and only turn dishwasher and laundry washing machine when they are full.
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Turned Off Devices Still Waste Energy
Any electronic device that is plugged in can still use electric energy even when it’s in the ‘sleep mode’. Plenty of devices use a small amount of energy continuously even when they are turned off, so plug out all your TVs, DVDs, and phone chargers when you’re not using them. You can also choose to plug home electronics into power strips and when the equipment is not used to turn the power strips off. This will save you some watts in the long run as well, and you will notice it soon enough.
Save Money On Lighting Too
Make sure you turn off all the lights in a room you are not using at the moment, because even if you have energy-saving light bulbs you will still be spending plenty of energy to light up a room you are not using. Swap your incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents, and you can even skip CFLs and switch to light emitting diodes (LEDs) instead. These handy lighting solutions are going are ultra-efficient and can save even more energy than common energy-saving bulbs.
Energy Saving Kitchen
Kitchen is full of things that use electrical energy that we simply cannot live without: the fridge and the stove for example. What you can do to reduce your costs is to use lids on pots and pans when you are cooking, and to make sure all of the appliances you are using are Energy Star rated. When baking something in an oven, use glass and ceramic vessels ad often as possible, and don’t try to open the oven door every few minutes to sneak a peek and see if the dish is ready. Also, turn off the stove burner a few minutes before you actually finish making the dish (this is the most useful when preparing boiling foods such as pasta, eggs, and potatoes). The water will keep boiling for a few more minutes and you will not be wasting energy.
As you can see, most of these things are not difficult to do every day, and they might seem odd at first but they really do work. The difference may not be drastic at the end of each month, but in the long run you will be able to save plenty of money and perhaps invest it into something useful that is going to save you even more money in future, like new solar panels.
