Trim Down Household Energy Waste

If you haven’t had an energy audit done on your home, then it’s about time. If you still believe you are doing everything you can do to preserve energy, you might be wrong. There are still many surprising means to help you cut back on your energy consumption.

One dilemma that many households experience is the lack of teamwork from every member of the family. If everyone is not on board on energy efficiency, we would not be able to notice these little results. It would not help much if, for example, only one is turning off the lights as opposed to everyone else leaving them on. So get the family to pitch in and help, and assign each member a task they can work on.

Let’s take a detailed look on where you could possibly improve your energy efficiency, and assign these specific areas to each member:

1. Completely turn off the faucet. It might sound like a no-brainer, but sometimes you just can’t get it right and water might still drip. To combat this, make an experiment by placing a bucket under a faucet with a slow drip and check how much water you have collected after 24 hours of dripping. The water you have gathered shows how much you waste every time you leave a faucet running. If the drip continues no matter how much you try to turn it off, then it might be the right time to have to repair it or get a new faucet. This investment will pay off in the long run with more saved water and energy.

2. Adjust the window blinds. In the summer, go around your house and close the blinds when you leave in the morning. This will help keep the cold air in and the hot air out. But if you live in northern climates and windows are well insulated, you may want to do the opposite and open the blinds on the south side of your house to absorb the solar heat and enjoy the warmth of the sun during winter. The idea is to think about your windows and how they affect the temperature inside the house.

3. Wash and dry full loads. You may have little ones insisting that their shirt needs to be washed before they can wear it again. I suggest you have to make a rule that nothing gets washed without it being part of a full load, or you will waste more water and energy if you wash and dry only a handful of clothing.

4. Always keep the refrigerator door closed. Everyone has spaced out while gazing inside the fridge for something to eat. Every parent has watched their children stand and think of what to snack on while the refrigerator or freezer door is open. Each time you stand there with the door open, cold air is flowing out onto the floor. And every time your refrigerator is “drained” of cold air, it will take much more energy to re-cool the food inside when you close the door. Energy wasted and money lost is added up if each person in your family does that a few times in a day.

5. Dress accordingly instead of adjusting the thermostat. We all know that if it is miserably hot outside and you’re feeling the heat, it is awfully tempting to set the thermostat low. You are making yourself accustomed to an increasingly chilly interior when you turn down the thermostat. If the temperature outside rose to about 95 degrees, by comparison, keeping your air on about 75 will seem very cool and quite comfortable. Same goes for a winter day. If it’s around 20 degrees outside, then a comfort zone will be somewhere around the 60’s. If you find yourself constantly adjusting your thermostats, your air conditioner or furnace therefore is making more energy to keep up with your demands. To counteract this, suggest that each family member dress appropriately inside the house with light clothes in the summer and warm and cozy clothes in the winter.

Start with these 5 easy tips given above to save money and resources to prevent wasteful spending and energy conservation.

Top Green Cleaning provides commercial and residential natural “green” cleaning services in Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Queen Creek, Arizona.