Green Tip Tuesday

Here is another easy thing anyone can do to save money while being a little more eco-friendly: turn down the heat! When the temperature dips down low outside in it is normal for us to want to crank up the heat inside to keep warm. But it is also normal for us to have extremely high electric bills during the colder months. But we don't have to. There are a couple ways to go about lowering the thermostat.

The first is my personal favorite because it takes the least amount of effort on my part - having the thermostat on a low temperature all the time. For us that is 65. Okay, so it is not always comfortable to run around in shorts and a tank top, but slap on some socks and a long sleeve shirt and it is pretty comfortable. Most of the time I'm still not in long sleeves (though the hubby keeps on a hoodie). Try just lowering your thermostat one degree at a time for a while until you reach what you are comfortable at. We didn't arrive at 65 all at once.

You can also keep the thermostat a little higher during the day and then turn it down by 5-10 degrees at night and lower when you are going to be gone. It makes no sense to keep your home warm and toasty for the furniture when you are gone and at night you can just use more blankets.

If, like me, you don't want to be bothered with manually lowering and raising thermostat or you think you would forget, you can always buy a programmable thermostat to do it for you. You can buy them starting at around $30 and set it to automatically change the temperature at times when you would ordinarily be in bed or away from home. Some of the nicer ones even have a weekend setting.

Lowering the thermostat is a simple (and even free if you do it manually!) thing to do to save you money that takes barely any time or effort at all. So get in there and go do it! And don't be worrying about the Kid in our freezing cold house, he wears warm clothes, too. Most of the time ;)