Today features an AMAZING guest post by my friend Fred Schebesta. Fred writes about saving money at Savings Account Finder, he focuses on helping people find, compare and apply online for savings accounts to put their hard earned money away. Earning extra interest for people makes him happy!
Saving on your electricity can be as simple as changing a few old habits and with power becoming more expensive and everyone becoming more aware of their carbon footprint, shouldn’t we all be doing all we can to conserve energy. These 72 simple tips are going to be even easier for you and your family to adopt in your home when you realize it won’t cost you a cent to start saving.
1 Turn Off Your Lights
A simple habit to remember and one which can save you a fortune. Turing off the lights when you leave a room and when you go out makes financial sense, and should appeal to your common sense too.
2 Stop Your Dishwasher Drying Your Dishes
Turn off the dish drying function of your dishwasher cycle and boost your savings accounts by letting your dishes dry naturally.
3 Using Table Lamps
Table lamps will light just the space you are using, making them a much more efficient option than turning on all the numerous and larger overhead lights.
4 Shut Off Mains Power
If you are willing to reprogram your alarm clocks and recorders when you return, turning off your mains power when you leave the house can save you a lot of cents when you add up the power used when appliances are on standby.
5 Only Use Lights When Needed
Get out of the habit of turning lights on whenever you enter a room. Often by simply opening a curtain you’ll have enough light for general tasks during the day.
6 Turn Lights Off When You Leave a Room
A habit which is going to save you money on your electricity bill when you do it regularly – plus there is no substance to the myth that turning lights off and on uses more power than leaving them running, so no matter how long you’re leaving a room for, turn off the light.
7 Free Cooling Passages
The air comes into your fridge and freezer through a vent on the inside so make sure you don’t place food or items in front of that vent, as the appliance will have to work harder.
8 Use Task Lighting
If you’re working on the computer or reading a book, use lighting which will light up just the space you need. This is especially important if you are at your desk where your computer, monitor, printer and office equipment is already powered up.
9 Hand Wash Single Dishes
If you have a full load then your dishwasher is more water and energy efficient, but if not, wash the few plates or mugs by hand.
10 Untangle Your Drying
If you separate your washing before putting it in the dryer the dryer will be much more efficient.
11 Indoor Clothes Drying Area
Setting aside a space inside to hang your clothes on an airer will make it easier for you to stop using the dryer and all that extra power.
12 Turn Off Your Home Office
When working from home you need a break from the office too, even if you just close the door to the spare room
and forget about it for the weekend. Well, while you’re forgetting about work, unplug all of your office equipment on the weekend too.
13 Unplug Your Home Office
If your home office doesn’t run at the same pace as an inner-city business then you don’t need to be using the same amount of power either. Therefore, if you’re not printing anything unplug your printer, if you’re not scanning anything unplug your scanner, if you’re not using your audio equipment then unplug your speakers.
14 Turn Off and Turn In
Before you go to bed it will cost you nothing to double check that all lights, TVs and electrical equipment are turned off.
15 Use Your Front Door Not Your Garage Door
Your garage door opener uses power every time you come and go from your house. Therefore, if you’re stopping at home quickly leave your car in the driveway instead of opening and closing the garage door. Plus, if you have an entrance to your home from your garage, use it, instead of opening and closing the garage door for your car, and again for yourself.
16 Turn Off Your Computer
A simple money saving habit to get into and one which will save you a fortune in power you’re just wasting when your computer sits idle.
17 Not a Fan
If you are cooling off in front of a fan, make sure to turn it off when you leave the room. A fan is only going to make you feel cooler when you are in front of it and leaving it on when you’re not there is not going to lower the temperature of your home.
18 Turn Off Appliances When You Leave
If you’re not watching the TV remember to turn it off, same too for your computer and games console. You can turn them right back on when you return.
19 Transfer From Freezer to Fridge
If you plan out the next several meals you can transfer all that food from your freezer to your fridge at once. Opening your freezer less will mean it doesn’t have to work as hard as if the door was regularly being opened.
20 Christmas Lights Light Up the Night
Don’t leave your Christmas lights running during the day – no one can see them. Also make sure to wait until it’s actually dark to turn them on at night.
21 Turn Off Lights When TV is On
The TV provides its own light if you need to get up and move around the room and you certainly don’t need the light on to see the TV better – in fact it’s likely to look better in the dark.
22 Turn the TV Off When You’re Not Watching
If you’re going in and out of the room getting ready for work or cooking or cleaning, don’t leave the TV on when you’re not there to watch it.
23 Watch Less TV
Turning the TV off when you leave a room may also lead you to watch less TV all together which can save you even more. Plus, flat screen TVs especially, get very hot when on for long periods of time so get off the couch and couple saving electricity with exercise, gardening or board games.
24 Don’t Dehumidify When It’s Not Humid
You will only need a dehumidifier to be running when it’s humid so to avoid unnecessary electricity consumption, turn them off during late autumn, winter and early spring.
25 Unplug Battery Chargers
After your iPod, camera or other device has charged, unplug the device and the charger from the wall. Even when your device isn’t plugged into its charger, the charger is still consuming electricity.
26 Turn Off Appliances
Leave your fridge and freezer running of course, but make sure all other appliances are off when you leave the house – your microwave, stereo and coffee maker don’t need to stay on while you’re gone.
27 Take All Food From the Fridge at Once
If you’re cooking take all the ingredients from the fridge at the same time, or if you’re making a sandwich get all the toppings in one go as opening the fridge door less, means it doesn’t have to work as hard.
28 Clean Fridge Coils
Clean coils means your fridge will take less electricity to keep its contents cold.
29 Use Half As Much Light
Go through your house and unscrew every second light bulb and see whether you really do need so much light in your home.
30 Clean Dishwasher Drain
If your dishwasher is clean, then your dishes will be too and if you allow only clean water to come through the drain, there is less chance you need to rewash the dishes and use yet more power.
31 Keep Dryer Lint Trap Clean
If the moisture can easily leave the dryer through a clean lint trap then it will be more efficient and be able to run for less time.
32 Run Full Loads of Laundry
If you run full loads of laundry you can therefore put more items in the dryer at the end of each cycle, and run the dryer less often.
33 Soak Your Dishes
Soaking off the tough food stains on your dishes overnight means that the following day you can put your pre-soaked dishes in the dishwasher on an energy conservation cycle.
34 Check Your Dryer Before the End of the Cycle
Just because you’ve set the dryer for 90 minutes, it doesn’t mean the items won’t be dry before then. Checking before the end of the cycle allows you to remove the items which are dry and turn off the dryer, or let the items which need more time dry more quickly on their own.
35 Check Your Dryer Efficiency
As your dryer runs it may tangle large items such as sheets. However, if you check their progress regularly you will be able to untangle them so they can dry more quickly.
36 Don’t Completely Dry Clothes in the Dryer
Taking items from the dryer when they are still damp will help them last longer and it also means you can use your dryer less if you hang them up to dry naturally.
37 Can Your Dryer Sense Moisture?
If your dryer has a moisture sensor feature make sure this is activated as your dryer will shut off once it senses the clothes are dry.
38 Do Consecutive Loads of Laundry
When your dryer is already warmed up, keep washing to take advantage of the warmth, rather than making it heat up from cold again another time.
39 Don’t Use the Wrinkle Shield Feature of Your Dryer
If left unattended, the Wrinkle Shield will run the dryer at the end of the cycle for two minutes, every five minutes to stop the clothes wrinkling inside. If you’re out and unaware, your dryer will be running almost the entire time.
40 Turn Off Your Home Office
If you don’t want to scramble around with cables when you’re not using your office equipment, at least turn them off when they’re not in use.
41 Put Scanner on Sleep Mode
This means you don’t even have to remember to turn off your scanner after use, and you can still save electricity.
42 Put Printer on Sleep Mode
Using the sleep function means you don’t have to plug in and unplug your printer each time you stop using it, but you can still save on your power bill.
43 Put Fax Machine on Sleep Mode
Leaving your fax machine on full time in case a fax comes through is unnecessarily using power but putting it to sleep mode can combat this waste.
44 Turn Off Your Games Console
Anything like a Nintendo an X-Box or a PlayStation will keep using power even when you’re not playing so if you’ve finished or are taking a break, save and turn it off.
45 Unplug Your Games Console
Even if the console is off it is still using power so unplug your Nintendo, X-Box or PlayStation at the wall.
46 Unplug Your Phone Charger
Even if you’ve unplugged your phone from its charger, the charger is still sucking out power if it’s left plugged in.
47 Manual Gardening
Use manual shears to trim the bushes and hedges in your garden rather than powering up your electric trimmers.
48 Manual Can Opener
If you have an electric can opener, you probably still have a manual one so get it out of the drawer and stop using an electrical appliance when you have a manual one which works just as well and for free.
49 Have Bread Not Toast
Choosing to eat your bread fresh rather than toasted can save a lot of power over breakfast, especially if the whole family gets onboard with bread.
50 Rotate Cordless Phones in One Charger
Instead of having several cordless phone handsets charging at once, use just one charger base on a rotation basis.
51 Computer on Standby
This is a setting you can easily change and you can chose the time-out period before your computer powers down after inactivity.
52 Air Dry Your Hair
Before you blast your hair with the hair dryer, consider whether you really need to – are you going out, are you going to catch a cold? Probably not, so where you have the opportunity to air dry you hair, do – try washing your hair at night and when you wake up in the morning it’s dry, for free.
53 Light Free Day
Get into the habit of using no lights for just one day a week. You can make it into a game or challenge for your family, or simply start a romantic candle-lit dinner tradition – all while saving on your power bill.
54 Don’t Dispose of Garbage in the Sink
If you have a garbage disposal system in your sink, think before you use it – do you really need to or can you just take your rubbish out to the bin?
55 Fill Up Your Dishwasher
Don’t run your dishwasher unless it’s full as you’re going to do more loads in the long run and waste all that power and water on a half load.
56 Unplug the Second Fridge
If you have a second fridge in the laundry or garage for beers and food and other drinks for parties, it doesn’t need to be plugged in all the time. If you can, even try to get rid of it all together.
57 Disconnect the Microwave Light
Your kitchen is likely to be quite well lit so when you (responsibly) unplug the light bulb in the microwave to save on electricity, you probably won’t even miss it.
58 Raise the Fridge Temperature
Don’t raise the temperature so far that your food spoils, but just check the setting now – is it on the coldest setting? Probably. Well it doesn’t need to be, turn the thermostat just a few notches warmer and your fridge won’t have to work so hard.
59 Raise the Freezer Temperature
The same electricity saving idea can be applied to your freezer too because unless your freezer is packed to the brim, it doesn’t need to be on the absolute coldest setting to keep things frozen.
60 Remove One Light Bulb in Your Garage Door Opener
While it’s convenient for your garage door opener to light up when you’ve just entered, most systems will have two light bulbs, so try it with just one and see whether there’s enough light.
61 Turn Off the Porch Light When You Get Home
If you’re the last one home at night, who are you leaving the porch light on for? This is a simple habit to get into when you get home.
62 Leave the Porch Light Off
Chances are your street is lit with street lights so do you really need to leave the porch light on at all? Moonlight, coupled with the street lights or even the light of your mobile phone should be enough to help you find the right key at night for free.
63 Use a Single Power Board
You can use one power board in the lounge, one in the office, one in the bedroom, one for the kids…once you connect all appliances in a room to one power board you can quickly and easily turn off everything at once so you can be sure you’re not wasting any standby power.
64 Separate Your Fridge and Stove
If your fridge is next to your stove, your fridge is going to have to work a lot harder to keep cool with all that extra hot air around – especially if you open the fridge while you’re cooking.
65 Paint Light
Choosing light paint colors can help minimize the need for more lighting as light paint naturally reflects light into dark spaces.
66 Give Your Electronics a Holiday
When you go away on holiday, give your electrical appliances a break too and unplug all the clock radios, DVD players, game consoles and TVs. If you’re leaving for an extended period even try and empty out the fridge so you can unplug that too.
67 Fill Up Your Fridge
If your fridge isn’t full, place some (full) water bottles inside as this leaves less space that your fridge has to work on to keep cool, and the cold items will keep the fridge itself cold too.
68 Collect Leaves Manually
Use a rake instead of a leaf blower and take the opportunity to get a little exercise as you save some electricity.
69 Clean Your Light Fixtures
If your light fixtures are clean, you will probably find you can get away with turning on fewer lights, as there is more light coming from the ones already on.
70 Keep the Pool Pump Clean
Make sure the strainer baskets in your swimming pool pump are free and clean, because when they start to get blocked, the pump has to work harder and use more electricity.
71 Keep Your Freezer Full
If your freezer is full, the frozen items will work to keep the inside of the freezer cold and allow the freezer to use less electricity.
72 Shovel Snow by Hand
Get out there and put your back into shoveling snow by hand, rather than using your snow blower. It might even help you work off those extra winter kilos you put on over the holidays.
Good points but many are repeated. I have some more energy saving tips:
Change your light bulbs to energy saving or fluorescent.
Do your laundry before 10am or after 10pm – at these times power demand throughout the city is lower and cheaper.
Do only full loads – but do not overload (this will cause your washer and dryer to work harder and possibly breakdown)
Get rain water bins (keep gutters clean) collect rain water- use for an array of chores (laundry, dishes, mopping, washing car, etc.)
If possible invest in solar products.
Turn off circuit breakers on water heaters – turn on 1/2 hr – 1hr before bathing (saves hundreds in a year, water heaters are constantly running to maintain water hot)
Don’t place papers -newspapers, magazines in regular trash – place in boxes or by themselves in empty trash can. Saves about $50 in trash bags.
Use store plastic bags for lunches, garbage, storage.
Use food leftovers, skins(peels) leaves as compost.
Soap water used to wash car and/or mopping can be drained on lawn (as long as no harmful chemicals are being used).
T
Sweet list Fred! Thanks for sharing.
Brian,
I also agree with Annie — good points with many repeated.
However, the only suggestion that really concerns me —
62 Leave the Porch Light Off
Chances are your street is lit with street lights so do you really need to leave the porch light on at all? Moonlight, coupled with the street lights or even the light of your mobile phone should be enough to help you find the right key at night for free.
Although this sounds like a way to save money, I think this option should be approached with caution. It may not be a very SAFE suggestion!
Saving a little bit of money is one thing, but being safe and being able to see more than just the key you are trying to find is another. If you only have enough light to find the right key, chances are others can barely see if something is out of the ordinary or if you may need help.
Just a word of caution! Otherwise, thanks for the information.
Speaking of repetition “Evil”, he repeated a few times, you repeated a 100%. Also, one can install more energy efficient windows on the south facing walls to give more free lighting. It is good to use a chest freezer than an upright freezer. Every time you open an upright freezer, all the cold air is dumped right out the door. For those that use electric water heaters, they make blankets to go around the heater to reduce heat loss. For the same water heater, it would be good to insulate all the hot water lines to save on water heating bill (again, electric potable water heater). Compact Flourescent Light Bulbs use a quite bit less electricity, they use about 1/4 as much electricity for the same amount of lighting from incandescent light bulbs. If you have an old house with old flourscent lights, they do make more efficient ballasts. It has to do with reducing power loss from what is known as Power Factor loss and can be corrected by getting a ballast with a capacitor. It would correct power factor to be 1.0 (100%) compared to an older one that would be maybe 0.8 (80% efficient). This power factor problem doesn’t just pertain to ballasts for flourescent lights, it also pertains to any motor that has coils in it to get its turning power. The coils cause an efficiency reduction. When purchasing something that has an electric motor, DC or an AC motor, check the PF or power factor rating, make sure it is 1.0 which means 100% efficient with the power factor. Many of the old factories have large electric motors that have old motors that are inefficient and need the power factor to be corrected by calculating the correct size of industrial capacitor to correct the power factor in the motor.
Some of this stuff is just plain silly–a lot of duplication, just slight word variation of the same thing. Some appliances (microwave, lamps, tvs, sterios, for example) are plugged in behind a fridge or a tv wall unit, etc. It’d be a little difficult to unplug them. Also to to unplug the extra fridge when not needed is a bad idea. Any knowledgeable person will tell you it is not good to do this–something about the freon. The rest of ideas are just plain old common sense.
Rather than teaching people to “nickel and dime” every god-damn bill in an ever downward spiral in the quality of their life – why don’t you teach them that their STANDARD OF LIVING is DROPPING in this country because of no jobs, no manufacturing, jobs being shipped overseas, prices on everything climbing, companies insistence on diamond size profits on toothpaste and ordinary sundry item and increased competition from other countries where the people are just as educated but can produce the same goods for cheaper!!!! Why the hell aren’t you talking about this?! Instead of these ridiculous penny pinching techniques?! How about focusing on WHY pweople have to engage in this ridiculous cost cutting strategy to begin with?! As usual, you’re missing the REAL ISSUE!. And why aren’t people rioting in the streets about this? Have we become like one giant quaaluuded populace, so passive that we accept whatever crumbs are thrown at us by our system, our corporations and our government? What the hell’s a matter with you people?
JP Rattie for Congress, 2010
I do agree there is alot to do for a little.But every little bit helps. I do agree with JP.But that is a nother issue.
Good article.Keep up the thought process.
It is time to stop asking questions and start giving people answers. Thank you.
To Frank,
Your comment : “Speaking of repetition “Evil”, he repeated a few times, you repeated a 100%.”
Can you explain? I made mention of ONE “way to save money” being a possible safety concern. Are you trying to agree or disagree with my comment? You did not make yourself very clear. I would like some clarification in order to understand your intention.
Please keep up the good work. It seems all your naysayers have their own agenda unrelated to saving energy. It’s oh so easy to nitpick (ie: you repeated some items) but very hard to provide constructive, helpful ideas. It also seems some of them are just plain lazy–ie: plugs are behind the TV, refrig–too hard to get to. I enjoy your postings
Try something. You can ask your energy suppliers to give you a printout of the usage for an address for at least the prior year if not longer. If you have your old bills you can use them as well. Compare the usage of this year’s months with those of the prior years and average the bills for those months if you have more than one year of billing information. Then turn off EVERYTHING you can for the same months for the next two billing cycles and compare those with prior years bills. Then plug everything back in and go back to your old habits for the 3rd and 4th billing cycles. Doesn’t matter the months, the temperature etc, the reduction in the amount of the bills when you turned off everything will surprize you. I have reduced my energy bills by between 1/3 to 1/2 for every month I have been turning off everything I can. We are not heavy users of energy as wound be the case for a young couple with children. Thinking back to the amount of cooking, cleaning, dishes, and laundry for babies, tweens, teenagers and their friends, plus the amount of small appliances used on a dairly basis, the magnitude in today’s world with no conservation in mind is appalling. One friend of mine bargained with her family for a weekend trip with the savings if so they would buy into the experiment. The did go on the trip! A few power strips in handy places eliminate the whine that it is too much trouble.
Whether you believe in global warming or not, using less energy prevents you from being just plain arrogant, plus it saves you money. If you are worried about the economy, hey you will have more money to buy with CASH the consumer items that will help drive the economy and jobs up without helping to the big utility companies, banks and credit card companies get even richer. They might even get the idea to reduce costs if they finally see that we are tired of being ripped off year after year and you might even have less disgust when you pay your bills each month or turn your head when you see your car repossessed or your neighbors move from their due to a job loss or foreclosure. Feel helpless when you read about how many children are hungry? If you don’t need the money, donate it to those persons who really do need your help. How hard is it to understand that if we all work together for good, things change for good, if not, things will only get worse.
My Daughter’s husband must have read this article before they went to Cancun. He pulled the main breaker. When they got back after over two weeks, the two freezers full of deer meat and frozen veggies had ruined the lower level of the house to the tune of $10,000.
Most of these ideas are already incorporated (for years) by our family. Saving energy is a “habit”, not a chore. If it’s viewed as a “chore”, it’s hard to make it happen.
$10k dead deermeat smell. Wow.
The point about times when energy costs the most is a good one–I didn’t know about that til I was 26 and processing submetered electrical invoices for my company.
But does unplugging stuff like turned-off lights, power adapters, and electronics that are generally just “powered-off” really necessary to save money? Does it do it significantly?
I like the ideas–I’ll def implement a few, but I also agree that the quality of life is important too. Don’t waste your life resetting the alarm clock every day–buy a wind-up! LOL!