20 FREE Ways To Save Money on Your Utility Bills
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As a stay at home mom, who is on a painfully long debt payoff journey with her husband, I feel like I have looked far and wide for any way to save a few extra dollars. Since no money is coming in from me, I want to make sure that as little money as possible is going out from me.
Once I felt like I had a pretty good handle on meal planning and grocery budgeting, I started to dig deeper into how I could save some coin on our utilities.
Laundry savings
Did you know that your dryer is one of the most energy thirsty appliances in your whole house? Here are some ways to save by getting the most efficiency out of your dryer:
- Line dry– Is there anything quite like the smell of line-dried clothing? I get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from seeing a full line of clothes, drying in the sun. Now, if it’s the middle of winter where you live and it’s way too cold to hang clothes outside, you could always hang the clothes over the back of various chairs, a drying rack, or hang the clothes on hangers around the house.
- Bonus: All that damp laundry that you have hanging around your house, air drying, acts as a humidifier in the middle of winter.
- Double bonus: the sun has a natural bleaching effect and works wonders on stains!
- Check on the clothes– Just because you set the dryer setting to “optimal dry” does not mean your dryer is a psychic. Go check on your clothes and take them out if they are dry. No need to use up the extra energy and over cook your clothes. Not only does that waste energy and money, but puts unnecessary stress on your clothes so you’ll need to replace them sooner.
- Peak times– Check with your electric and/or gas company to see what the peak hours are. Most companies have “off peak hours” between 8pm and 7am. So get up real early and throw a load of laundry in, or run a load just before you climb into bed. *This applies to other appliances like your dishwasher and oven as well*
- Clean the lint trap– clean it out after every dryer load.
- Cold water– MOST things can get clean in cold water. Use cold or warm for the majority of loads, and hot only when necessary.
- Run back to back dryer loads– So the main reason that dryers are energy vampires is because it takes so much energy to heat up the drum. So if you are going to do multiple loads, run the dryer loads back to back so it takes less energy to heat it back up.
Heating your home
My hubby hails from the high desert of Nevada. If you have ever lived in the desert, you know that it can have 40 degree temperature swings from morning to night. Brrr chilly in the morning to stripping down to nothing in the middle of the day.
Where we live, we also get those big swings and have taken to the “desert heating and cooling” method that my husband grew up using.
Natural heating and cooling ‘the desert way’
- Just before bed, open up all the windows to get the cool air flowing in. This is not only good for cooling the house down, but it feels amazing to sleep in a cold room under warm snuggly covers.
- Around 8:30-9am, just before it starts to heat up, close it all down! I repeat, may day, close that shit down!
- Do it all over again when you go to bed that night.
When we first moved into our home, it was 110 degrees all week long. One day my husband facetimed me on his lunch break, and all of a sudden said,
“Jen! Do you have the door wide open?!”
“Yes Nick, I do. I was freezing my buns off in here!”
It works…trust me.
Now, I’m not sure it would work this dramatically in a place that the temps stay pretty consistent, but it probably would still help lower your need for AC in the summer at least a bit!
More heating tips
- Wear layers and have lots of cozy blankets– There are very few people in the world that get to see the weird ass outfits I wear around my house in the morning. I’m planning on keeping it that way. But in the winter, whether living in northern Maine or southern California, I get cold in the morning. So I pile on lots of weird layers to keep myself warm. Embrace the layers!
- Drink hot tea – “to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”. Or to drink tea and wear layers is to feel the warmth from both sides…inside and out. Yeah..!
- Open your shades- Let the sun in and let it naturally warm your home.
- Run your ceiling fan clockwise- in the winter run your fan on low in a clockwise direction. In the summer run the fan counter clockwise, and the hotter it is outside, the faster the speed of the fan.
More money saving tips
- Don’t be one of those people who water their grass in a drought area in the middle of the day in the middle of August. Just don’t. Water at night or super early in the morning.
- Reduce your waste intake! Then downsize your trash container and save some moolah!
- We all heard it a million times when we were kids…turn off the lights when you leave the room. Do that.
- Ditch your cable. Try Netflix for $8 a month or Sling TV for $25 a month.
- Lower your water heater temperature. You do not need to scald layers of skin off to get your hands clean.
- Run FULL dishwasher loads.
- Shave just 1 minute off your shower time. Make it a competition and see who can take the shortest shower in your house for bonus points.
- I know some people who literally go around their whole house at night and unplug any electronics not being used. I’m not that hardcore.
What did I leave out? I’d love to hear how you have found ways to save on your utility bills? Add it to the comments below and share the goods!
