Thrifty Thursday

My husband loves to send me links to online news stories he finds while browsing on his phone. This was one he knew I'd be interested in, and holds some advice we can all use these days. Although many of these things seem to be common sense, they are things that I find we actually need to start making habits of! (Like closing the closet doors!)

This article is from a local Nashville news station. You can find the original here.

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Six Ways To Save Money By Cutting Back At Home

If you want to find a way to put more money into your pocket, just look around your house. You'll come across plenty of places where you can make cost-cutting changes.

Below are six easy steps that could save you as much as $550.

Running a household can really cost you, but there are ways to save.

1. We'll start with your home computer. A lot of people leave it on, all day long, and that means its using electricity all day long. That can really add up. A click of the mouse will move you towards saving that $550 a year. You'll want to put your computer on stand-by or put it to sleep. Once that happens, the savings will start to stack up.
2. The next stop on our money save home tour is a spot you might not think about. It's your closet. If you're in the habit of leaving the door open, you'll want to break that habit. There's a lot of square footage inside your closet that doesn't need to be heated, and if you live the door open all that heat's going inside, just wasting your money.
3. Adjusting the thermostat on your hot water heater can also help out. If you move it from the normal 140 degrees to 110 degrees you'll cut down your utility bill.
4. Chances are in your basement or garage you have an extra refrigerator or freezer running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An extra refrigerator can suck up a lot of energy in a year, and pulling the plug will save hundreds of dollars.
5. A lot of people have ceiling fans in their homes, but probably don't use them nearly as often as they should. That could be a big waste of money In the winter, run the fan on low in the clockwise direction to recirculate the warm air. Do the opposite in the summer.
   

So, put the computer to sleep and save $75. Closing the closet will save you $50. The water heater trick will save $30, ditching the extra fridge saves $200. Turning on the fan will bank you a $100 a year. That's $455.

Here's one more hundred dollar idea.

6. If you use a wood burning stove to save money, buy that wood in the spring. A cord of wood is about a hundred dollars cheaper in the off season.

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We've been working on #1 for awhile now. It's my fault, I forget! And I hate to shut it off if I'm in the middle of working on something and have tons of windows open!

I just heard about #2 a few days ago and realized that we do leave our closets open.....a LOT! Now I'm trying to develop the simple habit of just closing doors! Easy one, right?!

The #3 one will be the hubby's job! But I'm not sure we can reach it since our washer and dryer block it! We'll see! With only the two of us, we probably don't need it up so high, especially since we take showers different times of the day!

We don't have a basement or extra anything just yet, although I'd LOVE a deep freeze...I wonder what the savings on food vs. savings on electricity is?

The fans will have to be the hubby's job again because I can't reach them! I've always heard that but wondered if it really worked. Yet, we keep the heat down sooooo low that often there isn't much hot air to circulate. You don't even want to know what our thermostat is normally set at. I am a big fan of wearing fuzzy socks and my husband's oversized sweatshirt hoodies when I'm at home for a long period of time!!

Hope that some of these things can help you save money! Keep coming back every Thursday for more thrifty ideas!

~Stacey of Daisy's Deals~



Please email me for questions, suggestions, and anything else at daisysdeals (at) hotmail (dot) com. As I begin this journey, please bear with me as I am still learning myself! If you see anything that you feel is inappropriate or against store/website policies please "politely" let me know.