100 kWh challenge - Results!
A couple months ago I undertook a 100 kWh personal challenge. Refer back if you want the details of the original goal, but the basic goal was to use less the 100kWh in a month following a reasonably normal (ie normal to me) life style. I successfully met the challenge and used only 96 kWh in 31 days!
Disclaimer
As someone concerned for the environment I would dearly love it if everyone tried to reduce their energy consumption since that is the best way to reduce the pollutants going into the environment. That being said, I'm not going to push my ideals on you and I'm not going to be disappointed if you don't change your lifestyle just because I'm writing about my choices. Do what works for you and what embodies your values. For me that is trying to live as environmentally friendly as possible. If you do want more information about things you can do, just let me know and I can point you to some great websites and blogs or talk to you about things that have worked well for me.
Timeframe
I meant to do it during the first full billing cycle which I thought was approximately January 22nd - February 22nd. That is actually my natural gas billing cycle. My electricity is the approximately the 10th through the 10th. Thus I missed the January - February window. Therefore I ended up doing the challenge Feb 6th through March 9th. That is 31 days, so there can be no claims that I was able to do this because February is a short month. I did this in 31 days.
Reflecting on Initial Plans
As it_overlord suggested, I adjusted both my fridge and bathroom lights. Normally there are 4 bright lights, so I unscrewed half of them and found the level of light to be sufficient (and much more manageable in the mornings). For the fridge, I started filling up all my old gatoraid bottles with water and putting them back in the fridge to help insulate. I did NOT start taking more showers at the gym because as I mentioned on my Triathlon (and now other races) training blog, I just haven't kept up with training and getting to the gym enough.
Where to go from here
Since none of the changes were drastic, I'm not going to be cutting back on any of them. I'm going to continue to leave the fridge full, half the light bulbs out, and turn off power strips every night. I may still try to use the microwave timer less, but a lot of it depends on what I'm cooking and how much I'm trying to multitask. I've considered getting a standalone timer, but I don't want to bring additional plastic items into my house (which could be another challenge I try - reducing plastic use to a minimum).
Disclaimer
As someone concerned for the environment I would dearly love it if everyone tried to reduce their energy consumption since that is the best way to reduce the pollutants going into the environment. That being said, I'm not going to push my ideals on you and I'm not going to be disappointed if you don't change your lifestyle just because I'm writing about my choices. Do what works for you and what embodies your values. For me that is trying to live as environmentally friendly as possible. If you do want more information about things you can do, just let me know and I can point you to some great websites and blogs or talk to you about things that have worked well for me.
Timeframe
I meant to do it during the first full billing cycle which I thought was approximately January 22nd - February 22nd. That is actually my natural gas billing cycle. My electricity is the approximately the 10th through the 10th. Thus I missed the January - February window. Therefore I ended up doing the challenge Feb 6th through March 9th. That is 31 days, so there can be no claims that I was able to do this because February is a short month. I did this in 31 days.
Reflecting on Initial Plans
- Reducing watching TV by cutting out reruns. I was able to do this fairly easily and I did notice that I would go days without turning on the TV at all. However, to counter balance this I found the wonderful site that has full TV episodes that you can watch streaming on your computer for free. So I don't think I've cut my tv watching time too much, I've just started watching new shows such as "The Riches."
- Reduce "watching" a movie while sewing. I did this successfully just like planned where I simply listened to music or nothing at all.
- 3 to 1 dry ration. I actually did this one better. I choose to not use the dryer for anything but the socks & towels load. Thus I actually eliminated one more run of the dryer.
- Turn off the laptop & internet overnight. First, I switched to a desktop and thus the laptop was never on, but I did turn off the desktop (and its powerstrip) nightly. The internet... well... I'm addicted. I didn't want the hassle of getting it started up in the morning since you have to plug in the power on the modem about 2-3 minutes before the power on the router because of the interactions they have. Just wasn't worth it to me.
- Not use the microwave for timer function. This was half successful. For things like pasta, it was easy to do. But for baking cookies, I chose to still have the timer going.
As it_overlord suggested, I adjusted both my fridge and bathroom lights. Normally there are 4 bright lights, so I unscrewed half of them and found the level of light to be sufficient (and much more manageable in the mornings). For the fridge, I started filling up all my old gatoraid bottles with water and putting them back in the fridge to help insulate. I did NOT start taking more showers at the gym because as I mentioned on my Triathlon (and now other races) training blog, I just haven't kept up with training and getting to the gym enough.
Where to go from here
Since none of the changes were drastic, I'm not going to be cutting back on any of them. I'm going to continue to leave the fridge full, half the light bulbs out, and turn off power strips every night. I may still try to use the microwave timer less, but a lot of it depends on what I'm cooking and how much I'm trying to multitask. I've considered getting a standalone timer, but I don't want to bring additional plastic items into my house (which could be another challenge I try - reducing plastic use to a minimum).