Reminders are Good!

Reminders. We all need them. This summer a bill arrived in the mail. It came as a total shock to me and my husband. How did this happen? How come our electric bill was suddenly double of what it normally is? Not like I stayed up around the clock sewing doll clothes. Was there a broken appliance sucking up all this energy?

Air conditioning? Haha. We don't have that in our little old house. We do have a few window fans to get us through the worst part of the summer but we don't run them enough to double our bill. DH (husband) was quite annoyed. Of course, it must be something we (the kids and I) were doing. Like leaving the refrigerator door open or leaving lights on.

Now we had to get to the bottom of this. Who wants to waste energy in these times of global warming? And who can afford to double their electric bill when the economy is down in the dumps. So we all decided to watch ourselves very carefully. We policed each other about turning off lights that were unnecessarily burning. We turned the dishwasher and clothes washer only on if it was full to the brim. Cutting down on TV time also helps!

Mostly I watched my own actions. One thing I noticed I had been slacking off with was the clothes drying. It's criminal, really. I even wrote an article Simple Steps to Save the Planet on the NK blog a while ago. Back then, I ranted about Americans wasting so much energy by using clothes dryers instead of hanging their laundry and drying it outside. You know how many gazillions of kilowatt hours could be saved if we all dried our clothes on a clothing line? A LOT. But here I was all lazy and Americanized finding excuses: It was too hot, or I am too tired to hang clothes, my back hurts.

So after that bill arrived in the mail it was a good reminder for me. MUST HANG UP LAUNDRY. And guess what? The next bill came and it was $15 less than our normal monthly bill. At the end of the bill was a note tacked on saying that the last bill had been a mistake. They had accidentally overcharged us by double the amount. Wow! I am so glad we found the reason for this strange bill. But even more I am glad it got me back on track doing the right thing for the environment...Reminders are good!