Electric Bill Updates

It's been a rather exciting week or two for our mail box. After last months GINORMOUS electricity bill SCB and I vowed to not turn on the Wall AC unit unless it was truly bad and unbearable... and we made it though the month. 

 

We made a point to turn off fans in rooms we weren't in and using and we made it a priority to take the extra minuet to turn off lights, fans, and computer monitors before we left for work so they wouldn't be running all during the day. 

 

Since we don't have any windows in our unit (but we do have 2 large glass slider doors), we kept the doors open and the screens shut to give a breeze throughout the day since the sun doesn't directly hit our side of the building (just enough to hit the plants and the deck but not the slider doors)... This easily made our home a good 5 to 7 degrees cooler then the outside all by doing practically NOTHING. When we come home, we can feel the difference between inside and outside and most times that's what makes the difference in how you feel. You don't need your home at 72 degrees when its 100 outside... you will feel just as great coming into a house that's 80 when its that hot out. 

 

Pair the nice breeze with a glass of ice cold water and its heaven without Air Conditioning. We also made a point of not baking and using the oven and stove top that much. Instead we grilled a lot more since the heat from the BBQ was outside, not inside. 

 

In the end the little sacrifices allowed us to make it thought the billing cycle (plus 5 days of us using the AC before we got the GINORMOUS bill) for only $44.67. 

 

what a relief compared to what we spent last month. We would much rather pay that and make compromises and embrace ice water and tank tops then the $100 plus bill from the month before. 

 

Even with yesterdays triple digit weather (and waking up at 4am to find it was still 75 degrees out) we slept fine with the slider doors open and the fan on in the bedroom with just a couple of sheets on the bed (yup, we each get our own sheet so we don't have to share).     

We did use the AC unit for my "Girls" night (which isn't on this bill but will be coming on the next one), but we decided to be smart about it and closed off the bedroom and the bathroom door so the cold air would only circulate though the living room and the kitchen (the two rooms we were using) so it didn't have to run as hard. 

 

It would be smart for us to figure out a way to reconfigure out furniture because the couch sits right next to the AC unit and that person FREEZES when its on... but with our current furniture it just doesn't work. If we are willing to get rid of an end table we could move the couch further down the wall and that would help a bit, but then we would need to find someplace else for the stuff inside the end table drawers. Its still a possibility were working on... especially since the stuff in that area gets seldom used and would probably fit in a bin under the bed... (but if its been seldom used since I've moved in, why do we keep it???????)  but it also means that the artwork and pictures on the wall won't frame the couch and it just looks funny to me when the couch isn't in the middle of the wall... 

but then again, I'm not a big fan of our couch... it was after all, my first roommates ex-boyfriends, Step-Dad's office couch.