Operation: Conservation

Day 30: CONSERVE ENERGY

My last gas bill was astronomical. My power bill wasn’t much prettier. Even my water bill was higher than usual. I realize the weather has been colder, and the heat has been working overtime, but it made me think about my energy conservation habits (or lack thereof) and the contributions those habits have made (or not made) toward saving.

Yesterday my husband was upstairs packing for another trip. When he was finished, I walked through the rooms to make sure he didn’t forget anything. I found that the only thing he forgot was to turn off the lights. Between the husband and the kids, EVERY SINGLE light upstairs was on, including bathrooms and the hallway. That needs to change.

I’d like to think I’m more diligent about turning off the lights than my husband is, but I admit I don’t pay much attention. So today I’m going to pay attention, not just to the lights that don’t need to be on, but to all the other ways my family and I can conserve energy. Any suggestions?

I think I have some improving to do. I must have walked into my kitchen a half a dozen times today thinking, “Why is this light on?” and having no recollection of leaving it on.

Part of my problem is that I’m a multi-tasking scatterbrain. Throughout the day, my thought process goes a little something like this: I’ll put the waffles in the toaster and while I wait I’ll start a load of laundry and after that I’ll bring the dry laundry upstairs and then I’ll lay out clothes for the kids but oh man the humidifier is still running and I really need to clean that today and then oops the waffles are burning better run downstairs but first I’ll move that dump truck out of the hallway…and on and on until my day seems like one long grammatically incorrect run-on sentence. My point is, when I hop from room to room to room in the span of 7 minutes, it’s easy to forget to turn off the lights, especially when I had every intention of returning to that room “in a second.”

But in general, I did find some areas of improvement other than turning off lights. I took a shorter shower and didn’t fill the kids’ baths as high. I reminded the kids to turn the water off while they brushed their teeth and washed their hands. I washed fewer dishes by hand, because yes, running the dishwasher uses less water than hand washing. I washed several loads of laundry, all back to back so the dryer was still warm for the next load (I read somewhere that that helps dry clothes faster, but I don’t know if that’s really true). I turned down the thermostat to Borderline Frigid when I wasn’t home. (I was planning to teach myself how to set the thermostat, but my schedule isn’t exactly the same from day to day so that probably wouldn’t help me.) Heck, I even reused tin foil, cleaned up with dish towels instead of paper towels, and used fewer squares of toilet paper! I’m conserving all over the place!

Mommy, no one is greater than God….Except Santa.

Out of the mouths of babes.