$796 Saved On Energy Cost In One Year!

Do you remember when I posted way back in September that it was possible to save 800 bucks off your energy bill in one year WITHOUT replacing your windows?

Well I've got an update for you!

Our final savings tally for the year was $796.08!  There is no doubt in my mind that we would have broken the $800 barrier if this past December hadn't been 6% colder than last year's December.

I'll have another post out next fall with several new additional low budget techniques that I've implemented since the original September post.

***

Build A DIY Secret Bookshelf Compartment!

Regardless of whether or not you actually have anything secret to store in your home, every Daddy, silly or not, wants a secret compartment.


I've read lots of interesting ideas for creating secret spots but they always looked like they'd take years to complete and cost thousands of lives.

This is a quick and easy secret compartment that, so far, has fooled everyone who's looked for it.

Prep for Round Two With Mother Nature

As of this writing, they're calling for another 10 to 20 inches of snow for the Washington DC metro area.

Here are a few quick tips for round two:

Protect Hardwood Floors From Chairs

Please believe SillyDaddy when I tell you that you don't want to refinish your hardwood floors.

I've refinished two in our house, and while the hallucinations from the massive amounts of inhaled wood dust were awesome, it was otherwise backbreaking work.

Take a quick step to protect your floors from sliding chairs and furniture.

In the past I've bought felt pieces with an adhesive back and applied them to furniture legs.  This works just fine for a while.  But when dealing with a piece of furniture that's moved often (like dining room chairs), the felt eventually works its way off.

I found the following product at a local hardware store and gave it a try. 

Use your hammer to pound these into the tips of the chair legs.  They were fairly easy to apply and I'm happy to report that they're working perfectly.

***

Use WD40 To Keep Snow From Sticking To Your Shovel

TIP: Spray your snow shovel with WD40 to prevent the snow from sticking and making the chore even more miserable than it has to be.

You can also use a no-stick cooking spray but it won't last as long.

Extra tip: be sure not to get any oil on your gloves!  Makes it tough to hold on to the shovel!

***

Re-purpose Baby Food Jars To Store Your Miscellaneous Hardware (And prevent archeologists from finding your skeletonized remains)

As a boy, I always loved going into my uncle's workshop.  His father built (and I mean "built" literally) the home where my cousins were raised and where he and my aunt still live.  His workshop contains equipment accumulated over two generations and his work bench shelves are lined with jars filled with hundreds of random pieces of hardware.

There's something really nice about looking around that shop and thinking about how the equipment and hardware has been used and about all of the projects and all of the problem solving that's gone on there.

I wanted to recreate some of that same feeling in my much smaller shop.  I don't have a lot of equipment but I do have a growing collection of miscellaneous, loosely organized hardware.  To make my shop extra cozy, I decided to use some of J and D's very first baby food jars to store my odds and ends.

I was sharing my idea with my grandmother and she suggested I mount the jars to the bottom of each shelf to free up all the space below.  Hey, I guess they're right; senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose*.

Here's how to do it:

You Have A Smoke Detector – Why Not A Flood Detector? A product you need and never knew existed!

We’ve had a couple of water intrusions in our house.  The first came when I wisely put a fine mesh screen over a storm drain in the bottom of the stairwell outside our basement door.  The first big rain sent leaves down the stairs which promptly piled up on the mesh creating an watertight seal, sending the water that was meant to go down the drain directly under the basement door.

The second was when eM 1) neglected to change the lint screen on the outlet hose from the washing machine and 2) didn’t check to make sure the drain was clear in the outlet tub.

I realized I needed to find something to give us the heads up when water starts flowing where it’s not supposed to...

Save over $800 In The Next 12 Months On Your Energy Bill – Without Replacing The Windows!

In December of 2008 we got a shock when we opened our power bills (get it?  shock - power...).  Our combined power bills were up 22% versus the previous December!

I did some further digging and discovered that our cost per unit of energy had gone up 32% during that same period - greedy utility company bastards!

I immediately started working on a plan to turn things around.  Since January we’ve saved over $493 (and 31 cents!) on our combined energy bill versus the same seven months last year.

I’ve often heard that the greatest savings comes from replacing old windows.  Our home was built in 1960 and the original, horrible, single pane windows are still in place.  We’d love to replace them but that’s just not in the budget, even with available stimulus plan money.  I needed a plan that didn’t involve a massive cash outlay...

DIY Framed Earring Organizer

As I've mentioned before, eM has many wonderful qualities. Organization, however, is not among them.
She takes her earrings off and usually drops them on the nightstand - perfect level for D to come along and pick one up for an impromptu earring tasting.

I read about this idea and thought it might help her keep her earrings organized.  It was pretty easy and, as you can see from my pic below, it ended up looking pretty good.  Best of all she's actually using it and D hasn't put anything crazy into his mouth for at least 30 minutes.

 

I had a bunch of old framed pictures in the basement.  The frames are in good shape so I picked one out, removed the glass and backing but kept the nice double mat.

I took a trip to the local craft store and bought a black plastic mesh usually used for crochet for about a $1.  I fit it to the back, threw in some extra tacks and glue and let it set.

I already had the glue, tacks and matted frame so my total cost was about one dollar!

If you're reading this and you likie, leave a comment and I'll shoot a pic of the back.

***