Condo Blues: electricity
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts

Friday, June 7, 2019

10 Quick and Easy Outdoor DIY Projects that Save Money

One of my favorite ways to spend a beautiful weekend day is to work on an outdoor project. I get a healthy dose of Vitamin D, and more often than not, end up with a project that not only quickly pays for itself but saves us a bunch of money on some of those household bills and necessitates.
Bonus points if it includes using tools. Projects involving hammers is cheaper than therapy I always say!

10 Home Improvement Projects that Save a Ton of Money


10 outdoor projects you aren't doing to save money
Save these ideas to your Pinterest boards for later! Share them with your friends! 

Think of these as options, not absolutes. Have a different money saving idea? Share it with us in the comments below!

Monday, January 21, 2019

10 Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill When There is Nothing Left to Cut

Over 10 years ago, I took on a year long project to reduce my home’s electricity use and bill by 20% using my brand new non-Energy Star rated appliances, new habits, and under $100 worth of DIYs and cheap home improvements.

I didn’t meet my goal.

I beat it.

I reduced my yearly electric use by 32%.

Over 10 years later my home still uses less electricity than comparable homes and families in my area – including energy efficient rated homes, which mine is not.

How do I reduce my electrify use? There wasn’t one big expense or home upgrade that made my electric bill go down. I knew we used more electricity in the hot and humid summer running the central air conditioning and less during the winter because we have a gas furnace and water heater. The only constant is our all electric kitchen. Turns out the biggest money suckers are a thousand little intermittent habits that felt like picky anal retentive things at first, until the energy use and savings started falling as low as it can go and still allow my family to comfortably live in the modern world.

How I Reduced My Electricity Use Without Sitting in the Dark


Pin this list of tips and hacks to your Pinterest boards for later! Share it with your friends!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

How to Replace a Lamp Socket That Will Not Light

There are many things a women likes to hear from her husband.

“I love you.”

“Let’s get ice cream!”

“I bought you diamonds! Here are those cutting blades you wanted.”

are a few.

However, “Honey, were those lamps you gave me for Christmas expensive?” is not one of them.

My husband accidentally yanked the pull chain out of the socket when he turned off a lamp in our bedroom. He tried reattaching the pull chain. After several failed attempts, he couldn’t reattach it. He thought a new lamp was in our future.

Until I answered his question with, “Your lamps are hand-crafted stained glass imported from Ireland.”

In other words, expensive.

But easily repaired for under $5.00. I just needed to replace the lamp socket.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

12 Easy Ways to Save Money on Your Hot Water Heating Bill

Tens years ago, in 2008 my family started a year long product to reduce how much energy we use and our bill in our new home because a ton of Greenzillas said I couldn’t until I trashed all of my conventional and came new with the house major appliances and systems and replaced them with new super duper high efficiency (and expensive) everything.

I blogged about our new habits and inexpensive energy efficient DIY projects right here on Condo Blues in the very first year of this blog. Long story short, we reduced our use by 32% and kept it that way while staying toasty warm, clean, and well fed.

And using less energy than comparable families and homes in our area – including the Energy Star rated homes of which we are not.

Until recently when natural gas bill started to creep higher. Not break the bank,  we’rel going to starve high, but high enough to knock our house from constantly rating Very Good to smack dab in the middle of  Good. 

I wanted to figure out what’s going on because I had bragging rights on the line!

Turns out we were wasting too much energy heating water and after addressing  Tips One through Three we lowered our energy and hot water heating bill.