Sometimes saving money is so simple it’s a no-brainer. Here are three ridiculously simple tips for saving cash.
Turn down the brightness on your telly
Take turning the brightness down on your telly. Apparently it can save you as much as £100 a year in electricity. And you get a better picture too.
Experts say the super-bright settings used in electrical shops are not necessary. Yes, they attract us like moths to a flame, silly buggers that we are. But overly-bright screens are also detrimental to the picture quality, especially on HDTVs.
Turning it down can save £8 a month, almost £100 a year. Turn down more than one TV and you’re suddenly saving a great deal of money as well as getting much better picture quality. If you’ve lost your instructions, you should be able to find a copy online.
Turn the tap OFF while you brush your teeth!
It drives me absolutely nuts when people leave the tap running when they clean their teeth. We have a water meter, so when they do it at our house I can visualise our hard-earned money being wasted drop by drop. Three minutes of tooth-cleaning with the cold tap running full pelt adds up to a lot of water, which we have to pay for. Argh.
Sometimes, when we have guests, I’m tempted to either print a notice to put above the sink or march in there and turn it off. So rude, so wasteful, so selfish and ultimately expensive. All it takes is a bit of self-awareness to get in the habit of turning the dratted thing OFF every time you clean your teeth. Rant over… but you get my drift. It’s almost as bad a boiling an entire kettle of water just for two cups of tea… grrrr!
Dry your washing the old fashioned way
Electrical goods with moving parts use a great deal of energy. Imagine the amount of effort it takes to turn a metal drum packed with heavy, wet washing and you soon realise using a tumble drier costs a lot of cash.
Obviously it’s easier in summer to dry washing outdoors. In the sunshine, washing goes from dripping wet to totally dry within half an hour. Even jeans. And sunshine and wind don’t shrink your clothes like a tumble drier does unless you take care. As long as it’s dry and windy, though, washing dries outdoors in no time even during the winter.
In wet weather bannisters are the perfect place to dangle washing to dry. And the airing cupboard, being so warm, is also ideal.
I try to forgo the tumble drier as often as I can, just using it when there’s no more dangle-room left in the house or garden. I guess with just the two of us and no kids, it’s easy for us. But if you can manage it, it’s well worth the bother from an energy use perspective.