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Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill

By Denese. Filed in Frugal living  |  
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One of the best ways to lower your electric bill is to not use electricity. ;-)

(It can be done, but I’ll tell you about that another time.)

Here are a few ways we keep our electric bill low.

  • No dryer. I told you all about that already.
  • We use only cold water to wash our clothes. (Most stains come out better in cold water anyways.)
  • No electric heat. We use a woodstove for heat. If you can cut your own wood you will save even more money.
  • No air conditioning. We use fans and keep the windows open in the summer time.
  • No microwave.
  • Non-electric kitchen gadgets. I don’t own an electric can-opener, potatoes are mashed by hand and we even do beating and whipping with a whisk instead of an electric hand-mixer. I have never owned a food processor, I chop everything up with a knife. (I do have a good set of knives and know how to sharpen them!)
  • No curling irons or blow dryers. (We do have one blow dryer but it’s used for thawing out pipes in the wintertime!)
  • Gas stove. It has cost us less money to use a propane cook stove than an electric one, but the price has gone up over the last year. (One of our goals for this year is to build an outdoor, wood-fired oven.)
  • We only have one television. Does everybody really have to have their own? Television can be a big time-waster, too. We don’t own any video game consoles either.
  • Unplug stuff. Even if they’re turned off, electric devices draw power as long as they’re still plugged in.

Warning: A lot of these things will cost you more time and physical labor… but they will save you money. :)

Blessings,

Denese

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Frugal living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 comments to “Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill”

  1. Comment by Martha:
    Wednesday, January 28th 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Wow, um, I’m guilty of doing ALL of these. Uh oh, that explains why I pay over 200 dollars a month for gas and electricity. Is that a lot? I’ve never asked anybody this, hmm…

    http://www.flyawaybirdie.blogspot.com

  2. Comment by Denese:
    Thursday, January 29th 2009 at 8:48 am

    Right now our electric bills vary from $75-$90 a month…and I’d like to get it lower than that!
    We’ve lived this way for years so we’re used to it and it wasn’t all at once, I just gradually quit using things over the years. Sometimes it was because we couldn’t afford to replace it and when we moved to the holler we had no electricity for a while. Also, Lacy’s family didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was 14 and they sure didn’t have a television, so he doesn’t miss anything. :)
    You could try eliminating one thing at a time, perhaps the can-opener first? (Get a heavy-duty, double-geared hand-held one, they last longer than the single-gear.) When you get used to not using it, try getting rid of something else. You’d be surprised at what you can do without, especially if you have to.
    Our faith in the Lord that he will provide for our needs has helped me more than anything, if we don’t have it and can’t afford to get it we must not need it. :)

  3. Comment by tipper:
    Thursday, January 29th 2009 at 1:45 pm

    We have a wood stove in the basement-and used to use it to supplement the heat source upstairs. The economic mess has put us in the position of burning wood again after so many years. You are right once you get use to not having something you realize you never needed it anyway. Great post. Now if I could just follow ALL your advice : )