Small things make a difference
by Tom
(Hemel Hempstead)
When we last reviewed our electricity bill we decided that the time had come to make some adjustments and do something to cut the cost.
The first thing to go were the regular light bulbs. By switching to low energy bulbs we have already saved lots of money. We installed LED bulbs in the outside lights. These are MUCH brighter than the incandescent bulbs that we were using before. We sometimes have cattle in the field at the back of the house and when they move around it sets off the movement sensors on the lights. The neighbour's cat walking across the drive also makes the outside lights come on. We can't control any of that so it's important to have bulbs that use as little electricity as possible because the lights are on and off all the time when it's dark.
Inside the house we turn off the lights if there's no one in the room.
The other thing that we did was to turn off as many appliances as possible. TVs, DVD players, computers, laptops, mobile phone chargers, the microwave, the washing machine, dishwasher, oven timer and all kinds of other appliances all use electricity when they're on standby. We have a battery operated clock in the kitchen so we know what time it is and so we don't need to have the microwave and oven clocks turned on unless we're using them. The rest of the time they're turned off at the power point.
Even though those two things may seem quite small and insignificant they have definitely made a difference to the size of our electricity bill. It hasn't gone down much, only a pound or two but even so, we can see that we've been able to make savings. Over time these add up.
