I’m a saver. I only spend money on things that are necessary. When my husband and I became first-time homeowners, I was shocked at how much money it took to keep my home functional and comfortable. We were spending way more than I wanted to, but it was necessary. The money spent on electric bills went to powering our home. We had to pay the gas bill to avoid freezing during the winter. It felt like our house was sucking every penny out of our budget. To avoid breaking the bank, we started doing a few simple things around the house to save some money.
Turn off the A/C
I like to keep my home at comfortable temperatures, especially during the summer. I can’t stand the feeling of a hot, stuffy house. But the cost of cooling our house was getting out of control. I hated seeing money fly out the window every time we turned on the central air. But there are plenty of ways to combat energy loss during the summer, other than roasting in a hot home. First, I bought some heavy drapes to keep out the sun and turned the A/C way down at night. We found that once the temps get low enough, the thick drapes helped block the sun from making it too hot during the day. We also started using our ceiling fan a lot more when we were home. These simple tricks helped to keep our electric bill at a price that wasn’t breaking our budget.
It’s all about insulation
When we first bought our house, the insulation wasn’t that great. We could feel cold air seeping through the windows and doors during the frigid winter months. We were turning up the heater way more than we should, which drove up our gas bill. After doing some research, we found a few, easy ways to insulate our house. Spraying some insulation in the attic; adding weather strips to the windows; and replacing the older, weather-beaten front and back doors with newer ones helped to keep the house better insulated. Remember the heavy drapes I bought over the summer? It turns out they’re great for winter too. On the coldest of days, we would close them, throw on a sweater and some woolly socks, and become totally warm. We rarely found ourselves turning the heater up past 60, which dramatically reduced our gas bill during the winter months.
Install CFL and LED lights wherever it makes sense
If you’re still using incandescent bulbs, you need to stop. They’re expensive, don’t last long, and use six times more energy than an LED light. I made the switch to LED lights as soon as we moved into our new home, almost three years ago. To this day, we haven’t had to replace a single bulb. And we’re using a lot less energy than we did in our previous apartment where all we used was incandescent lights. Replacing a few bulbs in our house was fast, easy, and helped us to keep our electricity costs down.
Doing these few, simple things around our house helped us to save so much money on our gas and electric bills. But it didn’t stop there. Once I discovered how much money we were saving, I wanted to find even more energy-saving hacks. Here are a few of my personal favorites.
- Turn off all lights when you leave a room; also, take advantage of the natural light whenever you can.
- Invest in power strips and turn them off when you’re not watching TV, using the computer, or playing gaming consoles.
- Perform a weekly maintenance check on your appliances; make sure they are clean and working properly.
- De-clutter every room. We actually made some fast cash by selling all the stuff we didn’t need—plus it made my house feel so much cleaner.
- Making more crockpot meals helped us to save time and money, since most meals involve three ingredients and almost no prep time. Plus, they’re delicious and make me seem like an even more talented chef than I am.
What are some ways that you’ve saved money on your home? Let us know in the comments below.
