An Alternative to a Smart Strip

Photo Credit

A couple months ago, I was making a comment to my husband about how I was tired of the electric bill being so high.  I had cut down the amount we use our dryer significantly, washed the majorityof our dishes by hand, lowered use of our stove in favor of a crock pot and convection oven and did not notice much of a difference in our electric bill each month.  I was frustrated, and my husband came to the rescue.

Todd is a very handy man who knows how frugal cheap I can be.  I have been talking about purchasing and installing smart strips on all of our electronic devices; however, I never pulled the trigger because I did not want to spend the money not knowing how much (if any) it would save in the long-run.  On a weekday that I worked and Todd had the day off, he came up with a better plan to cut off the electricity to all of our electronic devices when not in use at a much lower cost: install a light switch at each device.  The cost for supplies was less than $8 and we have these switches in 4 places around our home.

Switch for the TV, Roku and DVD Player in
the Family Room

When we are ready to watch anything on TV or a movie, we turn the switch on and go about our business.  Having the light switches has not been an inconvenience at all.  We also have one connected to our microwave.  The microwave was glitching out and blowing the circuit for some reason for the first time in the 6 years we owned it.  I really didn’t want to have to go shopping for a new microwave and shell out $200+ for a decent one.  Instead, Todd installed a light switch to the microwave and whenever we use it (we use it a lot less than I thought we did!), we turn the switch on and go about our business.  Since installing the switch, the microwave has not glitched out once nor has it blown the circuit breaker. 

The Switch by the Microwave (can you see it?)

The real question is whether or not this has saved us any money on our electricity use.

My answer is yes!  I was amazed the first month to see a $35 drop in our electric bill (during a really cold month).  The second month, there was a $65 drop in the electric bill (the weather was starting to warm up a little bit, so the furnace wasn’t running as much)! Just this past week, we had another bill cut and we are under $100 for the month!  The lowest electric bill we've had in this house was $77, and this past month was $99, just $22 more than our lowest electric bill.

I am anxious to see how low we can go in the summer months.

For me, lowering our electricity consumption makes the use of solar panels and wind-energy to power our home more attainable.

How do you lower the use of electricity in your home?  

Learning to Live Without a Dryer and Dishwasher

As a part of trying to conserve energy, I decided to try to live without the clothes dryer as well as the dishwasher.  The first day I tried to live without these two appliances, I realized how easy they made my life.  They were truly a convenience I had come to rely on.  This is what I’ve learned over the past month by going without these two appliances.

Small Loads Are Best

The very first day I washed laundry, we had 3 large loads to do.  I put in the first large load into the washing machine to realize all of the clothes would not fit on our 3 drying racks.  So…I hung some up on the fireplace mantel and dried them extremely quick in front of the fire.

With the dishes, if I wash them as I go, it is not as overwhelming.  I have been washing the dishes after breakfast, which takes about 5 minutes.  I unload those dry dishes from breakfast while making dinner in the evening. When my husband cooks, he uses all  a lot of pots and pans, and the days he cooks, I am completely overwhelmed with a stack of dishes and want to throw up my hands in defeat by loading them into the dishwasher and hit the “start” button.

Frequency Rules

With laundry, I have learned to do several (smaller) loads throughout the week instead of 2 or 3 large ones on the weekends.  By doing this, we have enough room on the drying racks to allow the clothes to dry properly within 24-48 hours. 

As I mentioned above with the dishes, I wash the dishes after every single meal to ensure I don’t get overwhelmed.

It Ain’t Pretty

In the beginning, we kept the drying racks in the family room and they were not very pretty to look at

every time we walked into the room.  It then dawned on me that we could keep the drying racks in our spare bedroom to keep them away from cute little kitten claws (we have 3 – 5 month old kittens right now) and they are out of the way.  This has been working well for us.

 

Patience is Key

I have to laugh at this because I have no patience whatsoever.  It is so easy to hit a button and 34 minutes later you have dry clothes.  Hit the “start” button on the dishwasher and 2 hours later you have clean and dry dishes.

Now, it takes anywhere from 24-48 hours for our clothes to be completely dry (I am looking forward to the warmer weather when I can hang clothes outside on the line!).  I am learning to plan ahead instead of live in survival mode when it comes to dishes and laundry.  To me, it feels better to have laundry done and put away every few days instead of 3 heaping baskets of clean laundry waiting to be put away once a week.  It takes a little more time throughout the week, but it’s done and I don’t have to worry about it.

I joke that I would like to live the “simple life” like the Amish…without all the work.  I am learning that by getting rid of just two appliances, it creates a noticeable change in work load; however, I am (surprisingly) keeping up. 

I grew up with dishwashers and clothes dryers.  This is what I am accustomed to.  It is definitely a change in mindset to willingly go without, but I am enjoying it.  Right now, I am doing this to see if we can lower our electric bill and put the savings toward our mortgage payoff; however, I would love to be able to one-day create enough electricity to power our home.  Trying to reduce our energy consumption is one step closer to being independent of energy.

Do you live without a dryer or dishwasher?

What are your tips and tricks or advice for those of us just starting out in our journey of less “convenience” appliances?

This post is linked up to:

 

 

Preparedness

{I wrote this post several weeks ago to be posted, not knowing that Hurricane Sandy would affect so many on the East Coast.  This is extremely link-heavy, but I found some really great resources out there that I wanted to share.}

 

One of my favorite blogs about a homesteading family is also very big on preparedness.  Kendra, the author of the blog, is also aShelf Reliance Consultant.  Shelf Reliance is a company that helps others to prepare for disasters and emergencies.  In a post written back in September, Kendra documented on how to build food storage on a budget.   Let me tell you, this post instilled a bit of fear in me because I know this is what I should be doing but I have always put it off thinking “this won’t happen to me.”  The truth of the matter is that it could happen to any one of us!   Ohio is not known for its tornadoes or natural disasters, but our little town was hit severely backin 1985 and the locals are still talking about it 27 years later!

Shelf Reliance has a tool on their website that helps to determine how much food a family would need in case of an emergency.  Of course, the food is all Shelf Reliance food.  I was curious to see how much it would cost hubby and me to eat for 6 months off of Shelf Reliance food.  The number was astonishing.

For a family of two, one eating 2400 calories a day and the other eating 1800 calories a day, Shelf Reliance estimated that we would need $4,301.18 in food!  I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this number.  That is $716.86/month in food which is nearly triple our monthly grocery budget.

This got me to thinking about what we could do in our home to help prepare for a natural disaster on much less money, and this is what I’ve come up with:

·         Decide on either a non-motorized well pump or a rain catcher for water.   

·         Solar Panels with just enough power to use for emergency purposes only

·         Buy and store seeds to plant a large garden (these are good for 5+ years)

·         Continue to add perrenial fruits and vegetables to our homestead each year

·       Stock up shelves with canned goods (the shelf life on canned goods is typically 3 years: I would like to focus on stocking up on canned meats)

·         Buy rice in bulk and vaccuum seal into individual pouches

·         Stock up on dried beans

·         Stock up on the items that “last forever”

·         Increase our flock of chickens (for meat & eggs)

·         Master the chicken garden – a garden that will nourish the chickens without the need for commercial chicken feed

·         Learn how to butcher chickens

·         Make a root cellar

·         Consider getting a gun for hunting (something hubby thinks we should get – but I’m not sure how I feel about it)

 

Shelf Reliance has brownie mixes and baked goods as part of their 6 months survival kit; however, I don’t feel that these items are necessities. If there were ever an emergency, the last thing on my mind would be baking a fresh loaf of bread!  I would like to think that I’d try to survive with filling, nutritious food in my belly like rice, beans, eggs, fruits and vegetables.

I feel we could easily build our pantry to prepare for an emergency for well less than the $4,000 Shelf Reliance suggests it would cost in freeze dried foods and bulk grains.  I would say we could easily stock the pantry with 6 months of essentials for less than $1,000. 

Even though the foods I will be stocking in the pantry will not last 20+ years, we could easily rotate our stock after a year or two to make sure nothing goes bad.  This will help keep our grocery budget down in these months, and will ensure that nothing is wasted. 

The other items like the well pump and solar panels are much more expensive, but are things that we definitely need to look into anyways.  It doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan in case of extended loss of power. 

What are you doing to prepare for a natural disaster?

 

Saving Money on Heating Costs

People cringe when I tell them that our thermostat is set to 55 degrees during the winter months.  Many mention that I am taking my frugality to the extreme, but there is a method to my madness.

Our home is a 1890 sq. ft. ranch with a large footprint.  This means that it is quite a distance from one end of the house to the next, and our furnace is located at one end of the house…outside!  When we purchased our home back in 2007, the furnace that came with the house was not functional, and actually caught on fire at some point before we bought the home.  Needless to say, we needed to replace it, but at the time, we didn’t have $6,000+ to get a high-efficiency furnace. 

Handy hubby did some research and found an outdoor furnace for less than $2,000.  We decided to purchase the furnace with the understanding that we would keep the thermostat low and heat only the rooms we were using.

Pot Bellied Stove (that needs painted!)
The fans are to help circulate the air.

Todd installed a pot bellied wood-burning stove at one end of the house and there was an existing fireplace at the other end of the house.  It just so happens that the pot bellied stove is in the living room which is directly in front of our bedroom.  We stoke the fire and stay nice and cozy in our bedroom (it also helps that we have a heating pad on our mattress to keep us warm at night). 

We have purchased only one cord of wood since we’ve had the wood-burning stove for over 4 years.  We go through about a cord a year, and the remaining wood has come from trees that have been cut down or fallen due to storms around our property.  We have enough firewood to last us a good 2-3 years, and that is not including the 3 trees we expect to take down next year.

 The fireplace is in the family room, which is also really handy, because we spend most of our time as a family in this room.  This fireplace is not a wood-burning fireplace due to maintenance issues and my fear of the house catching on fire.  We decided to purchase propane logs for less than $250 to help heat this room. 

Ceiling fans have helped us tremendously to circulate the heat around our home.  Every room in our home has at least one ceiling fan.  Not only does it help circulate the heat in the winter, but it also helps to keep the house cool in the summer!

One day, when the windows are replaced, when we get more insulation in the attic and insulate the walls, we will get a high-efficiency furnace.  I cannot guarantee we will turn up the thermostat past 60, but I can guarantee that we will get a new furnace at some point.

We pretty much live in two rooms of the house, and both of those rooms are very close to our heat

sources.  I don’t see the sense in heating the rest of the house that goes unused. ((This makes it sound like we need to downsize, but I feel our home is the perfect size for us and hopefully a few children in the future!))

As a side note, I hate the thought of cutting trees down to keep our home warm.  We have plans to plant bamboo which grows quickly, burns hotter and creates less ash than wood. We have enough wood to last us the next several years, but we have plans to plant bamboo in 2012 and start to harvest it to use as a fuel source. 

Do you use alternative heat sources to heat your home?

2012 Goals

With every New Year, I feel like I have a fresh start, and this year is no different.  This year, I am posting my goals for everyone to hold me accountable!  I will be posting updates every month as to how the goals are coming along.  This is what my personal goals look like for 2012:


Spiritual

• Daily Devotional: Read The One Year Bible (I enjoyed reading the Bible in 90 Days, but I would like to slow it down this year!)
• Find a church that is a fit for our family

Marriage

• Read one marriage book a month and put it’s teachings into practice

Health / Personal

• Eat healthfully (more fruits and vegetables, less meat, carbs and sugars)
• Create and maintain a cleaning routine
• Lose 50 lbs (that’s only a pound a week – achievable!)
• Decrease the amount of “stuff” in our home (Purge-A-Palooza 2012! - will talk about that next week)
• Volunteer at the Happy Trails Animal Sanctuary (a monthly commitment) 

Financial

• Sponsor a child in need
• When I started making my list of goals in October, as soon as I had this goal listed, a fellow blogger wrote about how she and her family sponsor a child through Compassion.  After a lot of research about the ministry, we sponsored a child 11/11/11!  It is amazing how God put everything into place!!
• It is our goal to sponsor another child, but this time, through another organization called Amazima.
• Save $5,000 toward a replacement vehicle/maintenance
• Invest 5% of our take-home income into a Roth IRA
• Sponsor a pot bellied pig at Happy Trails Animal Sanctuary

Environmental 

• Less pre-packaged food / more cooking from scratch
• Reduce use of paper towels and paper napkins replacing them with cloth
• Lower resource consumption (electric / propane / water)
• Electric use of primary residence over past 12 months=15,298 kWh
• Electric use of the house we own next door over past 12 months=6,876 kWh
• We expect this number to be drastically lower due to the fact that we are no longer heating the shed, which was our pot bellied pig and puppy’s abode last winter
• Install energy-saving power strips throughout home

Gardening & Preserving

• Grow enough tomatoes, green beans, snow peas, squash and green peppers to be used through the fall and winter 2012 and spring 2013
• Can at least 24 quarts of tomatoes (sauces, stewed tomatoes, etc)
• Freeze at least 50 pint-sized bags of vegetables
• Plant at least 3 concord grape vines

 What are your goals / aspirations / resolutions for 2012?

If You Cant Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen!

Here in NE Ohio, we have had unseasonably high temperatures over the past two weeks, and it doesn’t look like it will be letting up anytime soon!

We don’t have air conditioning.  That’s not true.  We have air conditioning when we bought our new furnace 4 years ago, but it never worked.  I have put hubby off each and every year because I think air conditioning is a waste of money and resources unless it is 90+ degrees outside!  That being said, we use an air conditioning unit in our bedroom at night or on extremely hot days when we need a reprieve from the heat.

I came home one day last week to find Todd making zucchini fries in the oven, baking them for over an hour.  To say the least, I was a bit perturbed.  When it is 90 degrees in the house, nothing should be baking on the stove or oven (in my opinion)!

We (meaning me) have decided that with this heat, we would not cook on the stove in the house.  If we do, it would be in the morning to prepare a meal that can be nuked in the microwave in the evening.  Everything else is to be cooked either in a crockpot or on the grill.

That being said, these are a few meal ideas that we are going to be implementing this week:

Salad with grilled chicken

Roasted chicken (in a crockpot) with instant mashed potatoes and corn

Hamburgers (grilled) with zucchini grilled in a foil pocket

BBQ Ribs with leftover zucchini

Chicken quesadillas (we have a quesadilla maker that we love!)

BBQ Ribs with zuke & green beans from garden

Homemade Waffles
(we ran out of milk so had to use water, hence the holes!)

Dinner the night of the power outage: steak, leftover zuke and mashed potatoes

Here are some pictures of meals that helped us to conserve our energy/keep the heat down in our house over the past few days:

I would love to hear about what you make in warm weather.  Any recipes we should try out?

Dreams of Self-Sufficiency

When I speak of self-sufficiency, I am speaking generally about food and energy.  Even though I love what the No Impact Man  accomplished in his year of being “no impact,” I’m not sure our family could live that way.  None-the-less, I am striving to reduce our impact. 

I realize that being self-sufficient is not easy, but I still dream of the day that we can create enough power from the sun and wind to operate all of the modern conveniences of our home without relying on the electric company.  I also dream of the day that we can survive mainly off of the fruits and vegetables from our 1 acre of land.

These are the steps we are taking to become more self-sufficient:

1. Reducing our energy footprint
2. Buy items that will last (non-disposable items and appliances/machinery that can be fixed by my handy hubby)
3. Plant perennial fruits and vegetables (Click here for an extensive list!)
4. Expand existing garden and build new gardens to yield more produce
5. Make use of any available land to build edible perennial landscaping
6. Grow and dry our own herbs
7. “Buy it used, wear it out, make it do or do without.”

I do have my limits!  We will not be growing our own wheat/flour, raising our own meat or dairy products.  I would love to have bees for the honey (thus not needing sugar), but I will have to work on hubby for that.  I’m thankful he finally gave in to getting chickens*!

For me, becoming self-sufficient is a way of thrift and frugality along with an awareness of how we use our resources to positively affect the environment.  To become self-sufficient will not be easy nor will it happen overnight.  That being said, I have always had a desire to live this way.  It may take 3-5 years to get the garden to produce enough to sustain us throughout the Winter and Spring months. It will take even longer to make our home run efficiently and with minimal pull from our environmental resources.  Little by little, we are taking steps to reach our goals of self-sufficiency and each year, we get a little bit closer to living out our vision.

Are you striving to become self-sufficient?

What steps are you taking now to help you down the road of self-sufficiency?

*Hubby wanted nothing to do with chickens. As a child, he was pecked by chickens and absolutely despised them.  He said they were only good for one thing: eating!  Since getting our chicks in March, I find him outside holding them, and loving on them without me being around.  It’s so cute!  I am turning my suburbanite into a farmer. 

Minimizing our Footprints

Most of my life, I have dreamed of living “off the grid.”  I wanted to live out in the country with a few acres of land, a little cabin, a goat for milk, chickens running around and eating whatever I grew and canned.  At the age of 30, I have come to enjoy marriage and the modern conveniences of our home.  That being said, I would still like to attempt to live “off the grid” in terms of our dependency on fossil fuels.

Our home is situated on an acre of land.  There are no gas lines in our area, so we use propane to heat our home along with a wood burning fireplace.  I do not like how much we are paying each month for the use of electric, nor do I like how much we use. A few years ago, I invested in a meter that plugs into outlets that will tell you how much each appliance or gadget uses in electricity.  It was fun to use, but somehow burnt out. 

I did a personal audit of our electric bill to determine how much electricity we use.  The numbers were surprising.

On average, we use:

• 38 kwh / day
• 1,144 kwh / month
• 13,733 kwh / year

I am not sure how this compares “on average”, but these numbers are astonishing to me.  I would like these numbers to be lower by half over the next couple of years.

We are aware that our home is inefficient and we have many projects planned in the future to help make it more efficient.  They include:

·        Energy-Saving “Conserve” Switches and Power Cords

·        Hang laundry on the line more often

o     I love the retractable laundry line I got for Christmas two years ago: it has two lines so I can hang two loads at the same time!

·        Install more insulation in the attic

·        Heat / Cool only the rooms we are using when we are using them

o     Air conditioning unit is only in our bedroom and is turned on about an hour before bedtime

o     Ceiling fans keep the rest of the house cool

o     Keep the thermostat low and heat only the rooms we are using (we do this a lot with propane logs in the Family Room)

·        Replace windows

o     We have replaced two windows since we moved in

o     We would like to replace a couple of windows every year

·        Replace hot water tank

o     Our home came with a (broken) 80 gallon hot water tank.  Hubby fixed it for less than $50 and we have yet to replace it.

o     Our home has only 1 bathroom: 80 gallon hot water tank is complete over-kill

o     Looking forward to a 30-40 gallon tank and the energy savings!

I have been interested in solar panels since we moved into our home; however, the cost to minimize our electric usage today would be upwards of $20,000.  We bought our house, a foreclosure in desperate need of repair, for $35,000.  I have a hard time justifying $20,000 in solar panels.  My thought process is that if we do the little updates to our home as mentioned above, we can lower the amount of electricity we require to run our home, in turn, lowering our cost for solar panels in the future. 

This blog is linked to the Homestead Barn Hop!  Please come and join us!

Have you done an energy audit on your home?

If so, what do you plan on doing to make it more efficient?