A New Project for May - Electricity Awareness

It's been quite a while since I've had a new project.  I'm pleased that many of my projects from two years ago - no microwave, no artificial sweeteners, no 'poo - have stuck around.  Many others - once a month grocery trips, gas mileage over 30 mpg, countless diets - have fallen off.  We've had a very large project looming over our heads recently.  As of May 4th, our house will have been on the market for 1 year, as yet unsold.  I'm tired of waiting to move for more projects, so I'm working with what I have.

I've been reading The Non-Consumer Advocate quite a bit recently.  I struggle frequently with reducing our food costs as a means to getting our budget under control.  It costs about $500 per month to feed our family of four.  I'd never paid much attention to our electric bill or gasoline bills.  I was shocked when we were hit with an erroneous $330 electric bill.  The real bill was $160, which was still startling given that we haven't been using our baseboard heaters.  I realized the other day that there's a lot we can be doing to reduce that bill.

So today starts our electricity awareness and reduction project.  Our two biggest drains come from using lights when we don't need them and keeping chargers plugged in constantly. Miss F has learned to turn on some of our lights, and tends to leave the lights on in her playroom pretty frequently.  The baby monitors are left on all the time, the Keurig heating water for no reason, phone chargers plugged in... You get the point.

Last month, we used 1432 kWh.  At 9 am this morning, our meter read 13015 kWh.  My goal is to be at or under 14250 kWh on June 1st.  Hopefully, what is difficult at first will become habit rather quickly.