My mom likes to show my friends an embarrassing picture of me. I’m 3 years old, hanging on to my favorite blanket as it’s drying on the line. Laundry hanging on the line, drying in the breeze, was a frequent part of my childhood, and probably yours too. I didn’t even think about it. It [...]
I received a letter from my electric power company recently encouraging me to sign up for the company’s “Green Generation” program. If I joined the “Green Team”, I could purchase energy generated from wind power and landfill gas for a mere .01667 cents per kilowatt hour. I could also purchase Green Blocks instead at $2.50 [...]
In October, I wrote an article entitled “25 Ways to Avoid Turning on Your Heat This Winter.” I included some helpful advice and some silly ones just for laughs. Well, springtime is here and I can say that we actually avoided turning our heat on this winter. Our lowest temperature this winter was 2 degrees, [...]
It falls, taunting you, flake after flake, coating everything you see with white wet and cold crystals. It piles up in the corners, and in its complete blinding whiteness, all you can do is fork over your wallet. It’s a beautiful thief. You must turn on your heat. The blanket of whiteness is on your [...]
This is my project for the weekend – to build a solar window heater (shown in the video below). It’s been a fairly mild winter here in Japan thus far and I have managed not to take out the space heater, but it’s been getting colder and it is just a matter of time. With [...]
I am one of the first to admit that television, video games, the Internet, and cell phones add fun and convenience to our lives. But this past April I took the challenge presented by TVTurnOff.org and shut the television off for the week. For good measure, I also shut off the video games, and the [...]
With heating costs on the rise, it’s tempting to avoid turning your heat on all together in order to save money on heating bills, but who wants to be a human Popsicle in their own house? Here are some creative (and some practical) ways to avoid or delay turning on your heat this winter. Here [...]
I never pay any of our bills. Neither does my husband. But they get paid. Every month and on time. Now I’m not advocating ignoring your bills and racking up a ton of debt. That would be stupid and begging for bankruptcy. What I am advocating is never physically going through the process of paying [...]
When the Electric Choice program first allowed consumers to choose their electricity providers, the media made a big deal about the potential savings for consumers. I called around to several companies but found very little difference in rates. A short time later, I discovered another, less well known method of saving on electricity that doesn’t [...]
It’s that time of year again when the weather starts to get to a hotter and you need to find ways to stay cool. Here’s a question from a reader that is looking for inexpensive ways to beat the summer heat: We live in the Southwest which gets very hot during the summer and our [...]
