Good News on the Home Front

In an earlier post, I talked about why we moved into our economically-challenged neighborhood 1 1/2 years ago. The primary motivator was economic. Since moving from our admittedly gorgeous, but desperately expensive fixer-upper in a "high-end" part of town, to our relatively cheap, fixer-upper in a neglected, poor area of the city, we have been able to cut our consumer debt tremendously. Simply with the stroke of a pen upon signing the new mortgage, we erased more than $100,000 of debt and exorbitant utility bills (that could only be ameliorated with equally exorbitant home repairs).

We bought our "new" old house with special financing that granted us a forgivable loan, allowing us to replace the existing boiler that dated to the 1920s with a new, 94 percent efficient boiler. If we stay in the house 5 years, we won't owe a penny of the cost of purchase or installation of the boiler.

Our current house is still sizable - about 2300 square feet of finished space. We were able to remodel the kitchen area, opening it up to the rest of the house and saved money by installing a free-standing kitchen using furniture pieces instead of built-in cabinetry.

Our first winter here I discovered that I could keep the daytime temperature set at 68 degrees and be comfortable using a shawl downstairs and feeling downright toasty upstairs. Without checking, our highest winter utility bill (gas and electric) dropped from nearly $700 in the big old bank-buster house to under $400. Needless to say, we were thrilled.

This winter, I decided to try to keep the heat lower. Most days, we've kept the heat at 63 degrees for most of the day, only turning it up a degree, or at most two, by day's end. I find that I've adjusted to the colder temperatures and am uncomfortably hot in stores and homes set much higher than this. Granted, I always wear a shawl or have one nearby, and on the coldest days my daughter and I would snuggle up under a blanket to read. The upstairs has remained an oasis of warmth, so sometimes I will retreat up there if I'm going to be sitting for a long period of time - i.e. to crochet, read, etc. At night, we turn the temperature down to 60.

There have been a few times when I've really, really wanted to turn up the heat. I mean really wanted to! Usually, baking some muffins or quick bread or doing something more active, such as folding laundry, would warm me up enough to avoid the temptation.

As for electric usage, we've been more diligent about turning lights off, turned off the dehumidifier in the basement for the winter and have replaced more light bulbs with cfls, though we did add a second freezer last summer.

We just received our latest utility bill and the news is fabulous! During the month of February, we reduced our electric usage by 19 percent compared to the same time period last year. Our average cost per day for electricity dropped from $3.01 per day to $2.43 per day.

Our gas usage was even better. We reduced our gas usage 33 percent, with average cost per day dropping from $12.48 to $8.82.

WOW.
I mean really, WOW.

I plan to continue our efforts to live more economically and environmentally soundly and will chronicle our efforts - successes and failures - in posts to come.