Joining the Freeze Yer Buns Challenge

We're still keeping our thermostat low, although we did finally have to turn the heat on a few weeks ago. The thermostat is set to 60 at night and during most of the day, and 64 in the mornings for a couple of hours to help everyone get up and get moving. We are also keeping the back rooms shut during the day to keep most of the heat in the living areas.

I realized how much colder our temps are right now when I made kefir this week and had to set the jug in a pan of warm water for a few hours to get it to culture! It usually takes about 8 hours to work, but it took nearly 24 hours this time. I'll start it off in the warm water next week.

I'm using my favorite fluffy warm shawls a lot more, but other than that haven't noticed much difference. It helps if you adjust gradually as the season progresses.

Energy reduction update!

Well, we're definitely not saving 50% on our electric usage yet - but we *are* making progress. In the past 7 months, we've used between 4% to 27% less electricity than the same month of the previous year. Every single month during that timeframe saw a reduction - not one month saw an increase. Our overall average reduction in usage for the period is 13.5%. While that's not as good as I'd hoped, it's a start!

Next step is to do an energy audit, room by room. I'll look for things that are sucking power when they aren't being used, and see what can be done to keep them turned off. There is an unused TV in the office that I'm going to be unplugging and putting into storage. I'll also check for leaks in weatherstripping around the doors and windows, look into adding some insulating liners to some of the larger window curtains, and see if we can replace any more regular bulbs with compact fluorescents. I'll also be visiting our power company's website to look for more ideas on conserving power. With luck and some work, I should be able to shave a bit more off our usage this year.