(If you don't already know, our family has been hit with a 30% reduction in income this month. Many of my posts will chronicle our family's attempt to trim costs and grow income.)
Recently, I have made it a habit to check our electricity meter each morning. I am tracking our use on a daily basis. I use this to motivate me to cut back just a bit more each day.
In the last 12 months, we have spent about $950 on electricity for our house. We heat with natural gas, have a gas water heater, no A/C, and no dehumidifiers. The electricity used here is lighting, tools and appliances.
Artificial lighting accounts for as much as 20% of the electricity used in US households. If this percentage is accurate for my own household, then we are spending nearly $200 per year on lighting alone.
So, what can we do? Plenty! If your budget is in a pinch, like mine, there are things you can do today, that cost nothing, to reduce your electric lighting consumption. Some of these things can be permanent solutions, while others may be more temporary. But either way, you will shave that electric bill beginning today.
Keep in mind, some of these reduced-use of electrical lighting ideas are coming from someone with a budget crisis, and targeted towards the financially desperate (like me). You may be thinking, "oh that sounds too weird for my tastes", but someone else may find these helpful or may be already doing these.
The obvious and well-talked about is to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFLs or LEDs, or lower wattage incandescent bulbs. As bulbs burn out, I'll buy even more lower watt CFLs.
How about some ways to save on lighting, that cost nothing, and can be done right now?
Turning off lights when you leave a room is something we have heard since we were children. It's something I work on with myself and my family. But when you just can't get others to turn off the lights, you sometimes need to help them out, by
reducing the lighting available in the first place.
I took a light audit in our house. I walked from room to room and asked myself, "how much lighting does this space need for its use?" Some rooms, like the TV/media room, need far less lighting than exists. In some fixtures,
I swapped out the higher watt bulbs already in place, for lower watt ones. Easy to do, I simply stole a lower watt bulb from a room seldom used, and put it in the fixture in the room needing less lighting.
In multiple-bulb fixtures, I simply partially unscrewed one or more of the bulbs, if I felt less lighting would work.
Some rooms where partially unscrewing bulbs is saving in our house:
The light fixture over the kitchen table has 5 bulbs. The first day, I untwisted 2 bulbs. The next day, I did 1 more. Yes, to an outsider it looks like we have a bunch of burned-out bulbs. But when company is expected, I can quickly twist those 3 bulbs, avoiding any unpleasant comments about our lighting.
In the family room, there's a wall-mount fixture that holds 2 bulbs. I partially unscrewed one of the bulbs. These are covered by a shade, so it's not even noticeable that one bulb is not burning. In an upstairs bathroom, we really have overkill in the lighting department. I untwisted a couple of bulbs in there as well. There's a window that receives good light right next to the mirror.
In the garage, there are two ceiling lights. Most of the time, I just need one light. I simply pulled the chain on the other light, so only one will come on when the switch is flipped. (Update: I have since unscrewed the second bulb, as well. When I need garage lighting, I open the back door.)
Selectively reducing light in each room allows me to see if we really need all the lighting that is there, as well as saves us some money in the short term. When dark months of fall and winter return, I can easily increase our lighting, on an as-needed basis.
Another totally free thing one can do, is to
choose to use artificial lighting less. The rule I've been following now is, "if there's natural light in the house, leave the artificial lights off". Obviously, I'm not advocating that anyone bump around in darkness. In fact, in our own house, we do have a couple of spaces that don't receive much natural light. And we do use artificial lighting in those areas. But we've found life to be just fine in the most-used rooms, leaving lights off.
I am having to break some of my own habits, as well as the family's. Every time I go into the pantry (which does receive light from the rest of the kitchen work area), I have a habit of turning on the ceiling light, even when I'm just grabbing something right off the shelf in front of me. I am retraining myself to
not turn on that light.
For our family, it had become a habit to turn lights on whenever we entered a room. Now, we're giving consideration to whether or not we actually need additional light.
And do you know what we discovered? Sometimes less artificial light is actually preferred. Although we eat dinner fairly late, we now leave the lights off, altogether. It's quite pleasant. The dimmer light seems conducive to lingering conversation. Many evenings, we don't turn on any lights in the house, until we're readying ourselves for bed. Obviously, this will change with the shortening of days. But every penny saved now, can be allocated for electrical use later.
One adjustment I have made with regards to dinner, is to take care of pots/pans/equipment clean-up before we sit down to eat. Now it's just a matter of clearing our dishes to the dishwasher after dinner. And that
can be done in the dimmer light of dusk. I can take care of anything left behind in the AM, with my regular morning clean-up.
Again, totally free way to save on lighting --
rearranging our schedule to fit the setting and rising of the sun. If we go to bed before it's totally dark outside, we don't need lights on in the evening. And this is a help for rising early with the sun. We had been in the habit of staying up late and sleeping long past sunrise.
Many late night activities not only require artificial lighting, but also use electricity in themselves, such as watching TV or playing video games. Contrast this to activities shared with family in daylight hours, such as a game of croquet or a walk in the neighborhood. Living by the setting and rising of the sun can save electricity two ways.
Before the advent of electrical lighting, folks lived by the setting and rising of the sun. Our family is finding that a change to this more natural way of living with light, can work well in the modern world, too. As luck would have it, my daughters now have to leave for work before 6 AM. So getting up with the chickens is required of all of us.
Use table and desk lamps instead of ceiling fixtures. If you have table or desk lamps available, choose those over ceiling lights for activities that require artificial lighting. You can typically use 1 bulb in a table or desk lamp, instead of the multiple bulbs in most ceiling light arrangements, and still benefit from the amount of light you need for your task.
There's no need to light the entire room, just for 1 person to read a book. In our house, the family room has 4 can lights (ceiling) all on the same switch. There's also a lamp right next to a chair and sofa. It's more economical to turn on the 1-bulb lamp than the 4-bulb can lights.
These are 4 totally free, electricity-saving ideas that we implemented immediately. All are common-sense things that folks having been doing for decades. I do think that our culture has gotten careless with energy use. We don't see a candle burning down, or the oil in a lamp diminishing, so we don't think about how much energy we are actually using, that is, until we get the bill. Checking my meter daily is a way for me to restore that consumption awareness.
By the way, my goal for the electricity budget is a cut of about 20%. I estimate that we will shave about $2 to $3 per month, off the lighting portion of our electric bill. I'll outline the other ways we are cutting back on electricity use in the next post.