Turn off the lights!

If you grew up in a household like I did then you can relate to the constant screams from your mother telling you to “turn the lights off”! (and that’s the PG version). Everything seemed so simple back then; I would go from room to room not caring that the kitchen lights are on but I’m sitting in the living room. I also thought it was an absolute necessity for me to sleep with both the fan and TV on! This trend partly carried over to my adult years until recently; I never realized how much money was being wasted until I started living with someone who is fiscally irresponsible! I would come home to a completely empty house yet the TV’s upstairs and downstairs along with the bedroom and living room lights would be on! Well once I was forced to live on my own I realized that I had to make changes and part of those changes included reducing my utilities.

• My first step was replacing all my light bulbs with the energy savers. They can be pretty pricey but you can always catch them on sale!


• Second was so do what my mother told me to do as a child! Turn off the lights! Every time I left a room I would turn the light off. And there was no more sleeping with the ceiling fan and TV on which is hilarious since I thought it was literally impossible for me to get a good night sleep without them!


• Next was to wash dishes by hand! I grew up using a dishwasher so this wasn’t a easy task but taking 10 mins to wash the dishes by hand is a lot cheaper than having the dishwasher clean them for 1.5 hours!


• Did you know that leaving appliances plugged in runs up the bill????? That toaster, lamp, iron, George Forman grill, baby swing and plug-in that you are NOT using is just wasting energy and your paying for it! If you’re not using it, unplug it!


• Utilize your utility company’s online tools! One day while paying my bill online, I decided to poke around the site a bit to see if they offered cost cutting tips and they did! Not only that but they had a interactive tool that analyzed your usage in detail and compared it to the average customer usage.

Trust me, I’m not just preaching to the choir! These are all things that I’ve personally done and I can attest to the results! My bill on average before I started doing all of the above was $130/month. This was based on 2 adults living in a 2 level condo. After doing the above, my bill went down to $60!!!!!!!!!!!! So this is $70 a month or $840 a year saved that I can apply towards my debt! Pretty impressive considering all I had to do was turn off the lights!