How to Reduce Expenses: Turn off the Lights!

Okay, the first way that I worked reducing expenses was to turn off the lights.  We live in a home with a ridiculous amount of lights and most of the fixtures have more than one bulb.  That is a LOT of electricity being used unnecessarily! I actually started doing this in December and I saw a significant drop in my next electric bill.  I had to get everyone on board with this.  My children know that if they leave a room, they have to turn off the lights. I will also have them do random checks of the rooms in the house to make sure the lights are turned off.

If I am in the kitchen, I only use the lights that I need. For instance, we have a light fixture over the kitchen table and task lighting over the island.  There are also fixtures over the stove and the sink.  If I am using the stove, I turn off the lights over the table and sink.  If I am using the island, I turn off the lights over the stove and the sink.  I let the rest of the house go dark if I am not present in those areas.

Light fixture above my kitchen table

Task lighting above my kitchen island

I will also try to use a lamp instead of a multi-bulb fixture.  In our bedroom we have an overhead fan with a four-bulb light unit, and we have a bedside lamp with one bulb.  I try to use the lamp instead of the overhead fixture whenever feasible.

I also don't leave the lights on outside at night while we are sleeping.  It is wasted electricity.  Every time we turn on a light, we are spending money.  Every time we turn off a light, we have more money to put towards debt.

Along those same lines, I unplug things that we are not using.  Lamps that rarely get turned on, chargers, small kitchen appliances, etc.  All of those items get turned off and unplugged.  We rarely watch TV during the week, so I try to unplug those as well. All of this may seem tedious, but it really has paid off for us.  And it has made us much more mindful of our wastefulness.  Now, we do keep the hallway light outside of our bedrooms on.  We have children who would not sleep if we did not keep that on, so there is still room for (reasonable) compromise :) But all of the other measures have made a marked difference in our electric bill.