How to Organize Your Home To Save Power and Money

I will show you how to create a home that is energy efficient with many great tips!

We’ve been talking a lot about organization around here lately. With the ten week organizing challenge nearing to a close; I’ve been working my way through each space in our home and purging, assessing, sorting, and reorganizing it so that it functions in the best way it can for our family.

And it makes sense, when we are purging and organizing our homes, that we look to get rid of things we don’t need. Holding on to extra things can hold us back; pollute our home environment; and clog up our lives.

Energy Choices

Just like excess “things” in our lives prevent us from functioning at our best; so too poor energy choices can hold us back. They take money right out of our wallet and pollute our natural environment.

So today I’m sharing some ways to be more powersmart in our homes. To create a home that is not only organized and functional and efficient in things; but in our usage of energy as well. There are many more ways to reduce our energy consumption then just remembering to turn off the lights!

How to reduce your power use in the kitchen.

Your faucet! Is it leaking?? Dripping? If so it could potentially be wasting thousands of litres of water each year. And if you are losing hot water, your wasting not only water but the energy it takes to heat it up.

Fixing a leaky faucet in your kitchen (or bathroom), is not as tricky as you might think… BC Hydro has a great tutorial here that you could tackle in an hour or less!

You can also use your cooking habits to reduce your heating bills! Whenever we use our oven in the winter, we leave it open after the cooking is done in order to let the heat waft out and heat the kitchen. In the summer; do the opposite. Avoid using your oven and barbeque your food, or eat cold instead!

Alternatively, 15 minutes in the microwave is equivalent to 1 hour in an oven, and toaster ovens are a far smaller space to heat!

You can even reduce your yearly energy consumption by unplugging small appliances, like microwaves, while you aren’t using them. Did you know that appliances running on their standby power eat up to 10% of our yearly electricity use? I just found this out!

Also, take a look at the temperature your fridge and freezer are running at. You can significantly save on your power costs by making sure the fridge and freezer are set between 2°C and 3°C for the fridge, and -18°C for the freezer?

As far as the dishwasher, there are definitely ways you can reduce your power and water usage and I bet you won’t even notice the changes. We have switched to only running our dishwasher on a quick setting – which significantly reduces the water and power use of this {essential!} appliance.

Use less power in the bathroom

The bathroom is another area you can organize and setup to reduce your home’s power usage!

There are some really simple ways to waste less water in your bathroom. Turn the water off instead of letting it run down the drain whenever you are washing your hands, brushing your teeth, or shaving! And you could even take it to the next level by cutting down your shower length. Even reducing your time in the shower 1-2 minutes adds up to a huge energy savings over the course of the year; especially when you run super hot water through your shower!

 Save Money in the Laundry Room.

Finally, laundry rooms are another key room we can reduce our energy use in. By running only full loads and washing only in cold water, you can save yourself a lot of money over the course of the year.

Clothes dryers eat up a lot of power; by hanging even half your loads to dry you could save yourself nearly $50 a year. Or throw a dry towel into your dryer with each load. This trick significantly reduces the drying time of your loads. And who doesn’t love that kind of easy efficiency?

BC Hydro has even more ideas and tips for ways to reduce your energy consumption at powersmart.ca. You can also enter to win three separate smart energy prizes!! They are giving away a Nest package, an iRobot Roomba, and a Grand Prize of a Maytag ENERGY STAR® Washer & Dryer pair! Yes, please.

Hop over to powersmart.ca to enter!!

Thanks to BC Hydro for the opportunity to collaborate on this post topic. All words are 100% my own!