10 Energy Saving Things Anyone Can Do

September 7, 2008 – 10:47 pm

With all the rising fuel costs that have been going on, I think most people are becoming more energy conscious whether they want to be greener or not. As the weather starts to get colder again (did we have a summer?) here’s a few ideas to help get your place sorted so you don’t have to use as much energy.

1.) Turn off your microwave at the wall when it’s not in use - it’s just a glorified clock when you’re not using it after all.

2.) Buy or make some draft excluders for putting round the bottoms of your doors to keep the heat in the room you want it in, these may sound really old fashioned, but well sometimes old fashioned is still good!

3.) When you’re cooking dinner, pop something ‘extra’ in the oven that needs cooking. After all, you’re going to heat the whole oven up, so why not use it and cook more that you can just re-heat the next day, or even freeze and re-heat when you want it a week later.

4.) Train yourself to only boil the kettle with as much water in as you need – I know we hear this one over and over again, but it truly does make a difference. If you do boil too much, pop it in a thermos flask and you can use it to make another hot drink later on without boiling the kettle again.

5.) Buy big woolly jumpers and use them! Yes, another old fashioned one here, but we all seem to be more likely to put the heating on these days when it’s a bit chilly, and with the rising costs, maybe we need to go back to actually dressing for the weather instead of relying on the heating all the time.

6.) Buy (or ask for as a Christmas/Birthday pressie perhaps) a wind up charger for your mobile phone/ipod. These charge the phone with very little effort – a few minutes of winding and you’re there, and they use no power, and of course they can be carried with you so you can charge your phone anywhere!

7.) Check all your lights - make sure they’re all energy saving and if any aren’t then get them changed over. Pay particular attention to cluster lights, and think about going over to a fitting that just has one or two bulbs instead of several.

8.) Window film can be applied to windows to increase their insulation (Wilkinsons and other similar places sell the stuff - it’s like slightly thicker cling film). You place it over the window using tape round the edges, and then you use a hair dryer to take any crinkles out of it. It only lasts for one season, so it’s nothing like as good as double or even triple glazing if you can, but if you can’t then this is worth doing.

9.) Add heavy linings to your curtains. - you can get thermal linings which you can add to your curtains, like with black out linings, you can buy them ready made and just hook them over the hooks at the back of the curtain making them really easy to use and they can be removed in the summer if you desire.

10.) Put a door curtain up over front and back doors. You’d be amazed how much heat can be lost in these places especially if you have a letterbox or cat flap in the door.

Got any other eco tips? forum