Electric Challenge

In May of this year I decided that our family would have and electric challenge. I got out the bill from last year and told the kids that I would give them the $$ amount that we saved for this month. We talked about things that we could all do to save electricity. Nick came up with not using the radio all the time. He has it on in his room when he is watching TV and going to bed and shooting hoops outside...You get the idea. Lexi said that she could watch less TV and turn off lights more and remind the 2 younger boys to do this too. We all started off gung ho but faded a little at the end. We all gathered around when the bills came in anticipation of getting some big bucks. We dropped over a hundred kilowatts of usage. Wow I was impessed. That was about 10 dollars so each of the kids got 5 dollars. They were both happy with that and have been keeping it up ever since. By the way, our usage the challenge month was our all time record for the last 3 1/2 years that we had the electric bills. WOW.
In my continued reading of GREEN Liturature I have found many more ideas. One biggy is the CFL's compact fluorescent lights. I bought an 8 pack at Menards and put all those in downstairs. Lisa says that they are not bright enough. I bought a 4 pack of 100 watts equivelant CFLs and put them in the dark spots. Now they are better.
Another thing was to unplug alot of the electronics which are always drawing electricity even when they are not on. We got a couple power strips that we turn off when they are not in use to eliminate the extra juice that they draw. I also decided that I can walk up the steps for a cold pop so we are getting rid of the basement fridge. I has not actually been that hard to walk up the steps to get a beverage. I also combined to of my aquariums in the other 2 so now I only have 2 going instead of 4. That is 2 filters, 2 pumps and 2 less lights running all day long.
Next I would like to get rid of our old freezer and get and energy star model. This one is as old as the hills and I am sure it sucks a lot of juice. I also would like to get a new clothes washer too. Lisa said that this would be OK with her too. I am always looking for something we can unplug or get rid of now. What is next?????
By the start of August I was waiting for the mail every day to get the electric bill. How many other people do you know that can say that? We destroyed our usage record again. By 119 kilowatts. wow. How low can you go.

Water water everywhere

I was watching DIY network one night and the showed how to make a rain barrel. Cool I thought. I was able to get a couple of plastic barrels (55 gallons each) from work and made my own rain barrels a month ago. I got the barrels for a buck each and bought some spiggots at Home Depot for like 20 bucks I got everything done. Now whenever it rains I get water for free. Then when it dries up and doesn't rain for a while I have plenty of water for my rasberries, strawberries, and all my plants around the house. The rasberries are on the hillside below the house so gravity works great with the trickler hose to water all the plants in about 15 minutes. I use about half a barrel to water them. So between the 2 barrels I have water for 2 weeks if it doesn't rain.
If it doesn't rain for a while and my barrels run empty I have been filling them with the gray water from showers. I have 4 5 gallons pails in the bathroom that I fill with the shower water left in the tub. This only takes about 2 minutes a day after showers. I fill the big pails with an ice cream bucket. If all is full I have been using the extra water to flush the downstairs toilet. I got this idea from Ed Bagley Jr.'s book. "Going Green with Ed" . He has been green in Hollywood for years. Long before it was "COOL". He has many great ideas in his book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for some simple ways to start getting GREEN.

Plastic Bags

bug me. You see those dumb things everywhere. Lisa "went Green" on her own a year or so ago and started using those fiber bags with the nice handles. We have about 6 of them and she fills them up everytime she goes shopping instead of all those plastic bags. The hardest part was remembering to bring them with at the beginning. Now it has become habit. Our family brobably save 10 bags a week at least. That is 520 bags a year not in a landfill somewhere. I am proud of my wife for going green on theis one.

vroom vroom

A few years ago I decided that I need a new car. I had been driving Buicks for a while. 3 of them we have had. I started watching the Home Magazine for a year looking for a Honda Civic or a Metro. FINALLY a Geo Metro came up in the paper and I called about it right away. Some old farmer near Waseca had bought it new and driven it ever since. I bought it right away. 71,972 miles, old farmer driven, stored winters. I paid 2,100 for it.
It is quite a step down from a Buick Park Avenue, but I love it. I love it. I got about 37 MPG the first 6 months or so. I bought it in November right when the cold temps here in Minnesota kill the mileage. I was a little disappointed in the mileage so I did some research on the "web". The best sight that I found was www.cleanmpg.com. I learned a lot from them. It is a whole new way of driving. The most important thing is to SLOW DOWN. I used to drive 62 and now I go about 52. They say the increased drag on your car from 55 to 65 is about 50%. Point is when you get above 45 the mileage really starts to drop.
The next thing that helps the most is called driving without breaks. How many of us go right from the gas to the brake.?? You need to coast to a stop like you do not even have brakes. Put it in neutral and coast when you can. I can get the last mile home in neutral with only about 50 yards of gas.
Check out the web site for tons of other great ideas. Sign up for the mileage tracker to see how you improve tank to tank. The cool thing about this new way of driving... No stress. I am so much more relaxed now. I am not in a hurry, I just get up a few minutes earlier and take it easy. You would be surprised to see all the hurrying people passing rushing to wark waving and honking to me. I just smile as they roar by in their big SUV's and trucks. Nothing bothers me any more on the road.
PS Did you know that the current fleet of vehicles in the USA averages 20-21 MPG??? The MODEL T got better mileage than that.

The Journey Begins

Or continues... We all care about the environment. We all know we are supposed to recycle, not litter, conserve... I was thinking back when it all started for me and my family. The first thing that I can think of was about 15 years ago when I was the Manager of the Super 8 motel in New Ulm. I thought it would be a good idea to do a highway cleanup near the hotel. We had been doing a section of highway about 15 miles away near Hanska. I contacted the highway department and asked them to let us know if anything opened up on highway 14. They got us a busy area right before town right away. My employees and I walked the ditch picking up trash for a 2 mile stretch of highway 14 twice a year in spring and fall. This 2 miles of Adopt a Highway is done by the Super 8 Motel in New Ulm.

This continued for the next 3 years that I managed the motel. Soon after I left they quit doing the highway pickup and someone else took it over. This laid the groundwork for me to start taking care of another little area by our home in Courtland. When our first son was born he started helping too when he turned about 3. We keep the half mile up to town clean and have been for 8 years now. This year Lisa did the clean up with our two little boys without me. Its nice that Lisa did this on her own without me. Even though it is only about a mile of ditch, we are doing something.

That was about the extent of my greenness for a while. Nothing really sunk in about taking the next step.