Size Doesn't Matter - How Little Fixes at Home Can Save Big Money

Ok...so maybe you aren't Mr. or Mrs. "fix it." Maybe you have the mechanical equivalent of "two left feet." That doesn't mean you are helpless and it doesn't mean you can't save your self some serious money by doing simple repairs.

Winter is upon us, no question, and it's now, with rising fuel cost and the Christmas shopping season fast approaching, that we need to save every penny imaginable. You say there's nothing wrong in your house? You're not wasting money anywhere? Not so fast...

Let's take a walk through your home...Come on! Get up lazy bones...

1. The Bathroom.

Ah! The place of luxurious soaking, pampering, primping and wasting of hundreds of dollars! Wait...what?! That's right...your bathroom can be one of the most costly places to ignore the small problems a house may have.

Leaky faucets waste more water than you think! Obviously, this won't concern people who live in rural areas that get their water supply from wells, as your water isn't "metered" by a local utility. It's still a waste of energy, but that's another article for another time. If your water comes from a well you can skip this section.

Drip, drip, drip...doesn't seem like much water but believe it or not it adds up. A cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons. This is the mesurement that your utility company charges you for at an average rate of $2.38 per 100 cubic feet of water. This is after a monthly "service charge, taxes and fees" that they manage to hit you with. $2.38 cents may not seem like much, but if you have 2 faucets that drip in your house, you could easily "drip" an extra 3 gallons every couple of days. So let's say you are "losing" 30 gallons a week. 30 gallons X 52 weeks = 1560 gallons per year. Divide that by 748 (100 cubic feet) and you get 2.08 cubic feet wasted. 2.08 X $2.38 = $4.95. Not alot of money? Agreed! However, that's just your dripping faucets. Add in the fact that if you leave the water run while you are brushing your teeth, turn the shower on before you get in or have a toilet that "runs" and it can all add up very quickly! I wanted to show you that even a small drip gets into your pocket book over time, so imagine what these other things are costing you throughout the course of a year.

Now, I have 4 women that live in my house (wife and daughters). So you can imagine the countless number of hair dryers, curlers, flatners, straightners etc. that line the sinks and vanities of my home. These are a utility companies best friends! They have to be hot to work, I'm told, so that's why I can go at various times of the day and find these items causing my electric meter to do the cha cha.

Allow me to break this down for you: A watt is a the measurement by which used electriciy it measured. Your electrical meter on the outside of your home measures KWH, (Kilo Watt Hours). To simplify, if a 100 watt light bulb burns for 10 hours, it has used a KWH. Easy enough? Good!

The average rate for a KWH is 9.5 cents, so for that same 100 watt bulb to burn 10 hours you have paid 9.5 cents just for that one lightbulb. Yikes!

From examination of my in home beautification appliances, most of them are 100 to 200 watts. Imagine what they are costing your just sitting on that sink cooking away, in hopes that someone will need beautified. It's not worth it! An extra 10 hours per week with a 200 watt item will hit you for $98.80 per year. OUCH!

I know...I'm the bearer of bad news. That leaky faucet and those plugged in curlers aren't such a little deal now, are they.

2. The Kitchen

Believe it or not this isn't a bad room in the house usually. The only real problems are coffee pots which tend to get left on well after the coffee is worth drinking. You can use the same math from the bathroom, considering a heating element is usually 150 watts on a coffee pot. Every ten extra hours is $1.52. Other than the coffee pot, everything else in a kitchen is usually only on when needed so let's move on.

3. The Laundry Room

This is an area of concern whether you use all electric appliances or a mixture of gas and electric appliances. Let's face it...everybody is busy these days and it's easy to forget about that load of clothes in the washing machine or in the dryer. A load that has to be "run again" in the dryer to get the wrinkles out, will use the same amount of energy it did the first round. A load that has to be re-rinsed, will use the same amount of water that time as it did the first. Are you starting to get the picture? Little things add up!!

Add into the mix the television that stays on with no one in the room, computers that never hibernate, "night" lights that never go off and all of the other various assundry of items in your home and you can literally be throwing hundreds of dollars away every year. If you live on a budget like I do, you don't have extra hundreds to throw around. If you do, then hey, send them my way. :-)

Look around your home, check and see what it is that's dripping or burning your money away. Even a call to a repair man will save you money in the long run.

God bless, and have a wonderful Holiday Season!