Check out this great website for showing how much you’ll save!

http://www.mge.com/home/saving/thermostat.htm

We have also added plastic to our dining room windows (all the other windows have insulated curtains on them), better seals around our doors, bought a space heater so that our bedroom is warmer at night when we turn the rest of the heat in the house down (aren’t sure about this one yet so we’ll see!), and have begun to seal drafts in the home. With all of these tips and reducing our thermostat by at least five degrees during the day and up to eight degrees at night we are hoping to shave a good amount off of our heating bill. We are bundling up with long sleeve shirts, sweats, socks and blankets to stay comfortable but are finding that we are slowly acclimating to the lower temperatures as well.

What do you do to save money on your electric bill?

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The Frugal Home book has frugal tips on beauty and bath, budgeting, cleaning, debt, decorating, entertainment, food, grocery shopping, health care, holidays and events, children, environmental tips, remodeling, home and yard work, and weddings.

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The Frugal Home Ebook

1. Eat organic food, buy from the farmer’s market, or grow your own.

Organic food can be more expensive but the cost is lowering. You may look at adding a few organic foods to your grocery list, such as organic milk, which often lasts longer than non-organic anyway. Visit your local farmer’s market to support your local growers and cut down on the emissions it takes for the food to end up on your table. Grow your own organic food if you find it is too expensive. Everyone can grow something even if it just herbs in your kitchen window.

2. Recycle

If you aren’t already, recycle everything you can. Recycling can take a few forms, you may take everything to a recycling center in your town or you could find other uses in your own home for items. For example you could use glass jars for small item storage or design a lamp out of old tin cans. Ask around the artist areas in your town to see if someone uses household items in their art and may want your extras.

3. Throw less away

Recycling will reduce your waste but so will making food from scratch instead of purchasing all pre-made meals or snacks. Purchasing less will also help. If you drink a great deal of water then get refillable bottles instead or purchasing a large amount of plastic each week and reuse your ziplock bags. Once you begin to look at things differently you will be amazed at how much you can reduce the amount of trash your throw away each week.

4. Lower your carbon emissions

Walk, carpool, and use public transportation if you can. If this isn’t possible then plan your errands for one day instead of getting out every day. Make sure that your car is running well and that your tires are at the correct pressure so that you get the best fuel efficiency possible.

5. Borrow and barter

Instead of paying someone for a service you need look to your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. Perhaps you could trade babysitting with a friend or you can borrow your neighbor’s chain saw rather than purchase your own, especially if you only need it for one project. Have a furniture or clothing swap and invite everyone you know. You just may find the outfit for your next party or the entertainment center you’ve been wanting without having to go out and buy a new one.

6. Natural cleaning can save you money and give you a less toxic home

There are many natural cleaning products you can purchase or make yourself. Items as simple as cleaning with vinegar and baking soda can do a lot of things. These cleaning products are healthier for your family and often are much less expensive than purchasing products. Make sure that you dispose of items, such as batteries or compact fluorescent light bulbs as directed in your town.

To help you stick with this New Year’s Resolution, involve the entire family. Most of these are so easy to do that you will find having a greener life much easier than you thought!

Beeswax candles are made out of what you would expect the wax, or honey, made by bees. They are an all natural product so you can feel good about not harming the environment.

While beeswax candles are very environmentally friendly, you may think that they are much too expensive to be a frugal purchase. Beeswax candles are much more expensive than the paraffin candles you pick up at Walmart but it doesn’t mean they aren’t the better purchase in the long run.

When shopping for candles it is best to look at the burn rate. Paraffin candles often have a very high burn rate while beeswax candles burn longer. You get over 90 minutes of burn time for every inch of beeswax candles. With some paraffin candles your lucky to still have a candle after 90 minutes. This makes beeswax candles the more frugal choice as you get a lot more bang for your buck!

Save the Earth on a budget by purchasing beeswax candles for your home. They will not only save you money in the long run but they will help keep the air in your home cleaner.

You may want to hang lights everywhere that you can, but you may also want to think about how many you are using and how you go about using them.

Think about reducing the amount of lights you use. While you may want to, you don’t necessarily have to light up the entire neighborhood or double as a landing strip for the nearest airport.

When you do use lights, trade in your old ones for some new LED lights. Not only do these lights reduce the chance of a fire because they do not give off any heat, but they also use very little energy compared to the old style of outdoor lights.

While you’re changing to LED’s, you might want to pick up some compact fluorescent light bulbs for your home. These will cost you more upfront but they will last years longer than the regular tungsten lights.

Purchase an electronic thermostat, pick a temperature, and keep it there. The amount of energy you use by moving the thermostat up and down is huge. Use heavy thermal curtains to keep your house warmer and throw on a sweater and socks when you get cold instead of turning the heat up.

Have an energy check performed on your house to get a good idea of areas in which you are losing heat. A bit of silicone around an old window may make all the difference in a drafty room.

Take a look at budget billing in your area so that you have a set amount to work with each month.

Save energy this holiday season to save money and the earth.

What are you doing this holiday season to save energy?

In order to even begin reusing, you have to be organized. Organizing your home for free, even organizing your closet, and everything around you will be a big help when it comes to reusing items. How many times have you bought something only to find the same item in the back of your closet a week later? This won’t happen if everything has a place and is clearly marked. Declutter so that you know what you already have so you don’t go buy it again or what you don’t have and can stock up when it goes on sale.

Gifts that you keep on hand in case you can’t make it to the store should be stored in one place, with gift bags within easy reach. If you forget to purchase the wedding gift until fifteen minutes before you are set to leave, you will know exactly where to look and can easily throw a gift in a bag and go.

Keep your pantry as organized as you can. Purchase kitchen organization items if you need to so that you can see everything that you have, they will save you money in the long run, especially if you tend to lose a lot of food in your cabinets. You don’t want to buy green beans when there are three cans in the back of the pantry behind those yams you only use at Thanksgiving.

Getting organized will help you find things in your home so you can reuse them, recycle them, sell them, or give them away.

Are you getting organized?

An environmentally friendly shopping bag should be one of the first steps you take in environmental shopping. These shopping bags are becoming cheaper and cheaper. They can be handmade even! I purchased a few at time for about 50 cents to a dollar a piece. Others I received as free gifts and I bought a few nice ones. I plan on making some too but haven’t gotten around to it!

Look out for packaging when you go about environmental shopping. Pre-packaged foods are not only often more unhealthy for you than creating food from scratch, but they also come with a great deal of extra packaging that you end up just throwing away. Instead of purchasing the chicken already pre cooked and cut up, buy a whole chicken and make it yourself.

Look for products when environmental shopping, that can be recycled or reused. I will often reuse plastic containers or glass ones to hold craft supplies in.

Environmental shopping should also include a trip to your local farmer’s market. Less gas is used to get your product closer to you than if you bought from a local store and there is often no packaging involved, just drop them in your cloth shopping bag and go!

What does environmental shopping mean to you?

This upfront cost for compact fluorescent light bulbs can be decieving for some. While they do cost more to begin with, CFL’s are actually much cheaper, have a much longer lifetime than the old light bulbs, and use less electricity to run.

Most of us cannot afford to go out and replace every light bulb in our home but it is easy to slowly change them. We began the switch two years ago. When one bulb would go out we would replace it with a compact fluorescent light bulb. We also received a $10 off coupon when you buy $40 worth of CFL’s that we used to stock up with.

We have now switched over almost all of our bulbs and still have not had to change the ones we put in when we first began this process. If nothing else the lifetime of compact fluorescent bulbs is worth the price!

Start making the change today and save the Earth on a budget!

One of my dreams is to one day live a self-sufficient life on acreage. I would like to have a home that is “off the grid”.

This dream would be rather expensive as solar panels and wind towers are not quite financially available for the majority of us.

As each year passes, and my solar dreams get pushed back, I try to do what I can in the confines of my bank account.

To help everyone, I have decided to write a weekly Save the Earth on a Budget. I hope we can all make even small changes that will cost little or nothing and will help us all make a better for world for our children while sticking to our budgets.

One of the frugal living tips anyone can do is adjust your thermostat up or down at least a few degrees and take off or add clothes accordingly, instead of wearing sweats and curling up under a blanket in the summer or wearing shorts indoors in the winter.

To lower your electric bill and save you money in the long run switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. While the initial cost is much higher than an incandescent light bulb you will save much more in the long run. Not only will you save on your electric bill because fluorescent light bulbs cost less to use but you will also save money because you will not have to buy light bulbs very often. Compact fluorescent light bulbs can last years over an incandescent.

Another easy way to save money, and one of my favorite frugal living tips, is to turn off your lights and your water when you are not using them. If there is not a person in the room then there is no need to have a light on and you may find that often you do not need to turn a light on even when you are in a room. Natural light is often more than enough during the day and if you are watching movies at night then turn all those lights off and enjoy that movie in the dark!

Turning off your water, or fixing leaky pipes or running toilets, are also great ways to save money. While you are doing the dishes do not leave the water running but instead turn it off and on. You can also set out barrels to catch rain water that you can then use to water your plants or garden.

Do you have any ideas on how to save money by using less electricity and water? Contribute to The Frugal Home!