Friday, July 29, 2011

Fruity I mean Frugal Fridays!

I have always loved saving money, especially when it got me something really nice for next to nothing. ( Like my Coach diaper bag I got for cheap, who says I can't be fashionable and a mom?) So I thought I would share the ways that I cut penny's without cutting corners on Fridays, since everyone is loving my "My life is craziness post's" on the other days.

So tonight I am going to spotlight the insane heat and the toll it is taking on our budgets!!!!!! I don't know about you but I am about ready to knock some ventilation holes in my walls, just so that I can turn off my a/c for 5 minutes! So I don't have to demolish my house, we have come up with some other ways to cut down on our electric bill.

We just bought our first house (YEAH!) and we have begun some minor remodeling, one thing we wanted to do was put a new light in the kitchen. Mainly because as awesome as fluorescent lighting was in the 80's, it's as equally not awesome now. A friend suggested we put a fan up in the kitchen instead of just a light... yeah, I would have never thought of that! The fan has gives us increased circulation throughout the dining room/ kitchen area, and decreases the heat wave in the kitchen that cooking in the summer time creates! Installing ceiling fans in any room is a great way to circulate air throughout your house both during the summer and winter time.

When we bought our house we also had to buy a few appliances, and at the top of the list was a refrigerator, for very obvious reasons. In England we only had a under counter refrigerator ( like those"dorm sized" ones or as I like to call them "not so fun sized"), this forced me to become an excellent refrigerator organizer, really fast. I really liked the smaller refrigerator because it used less electricity, which ultimately means it takes less money to run. Who wants to spend their money on running a refrigerator? Knowing that I already had the skills required to make a small fridge work, we opted to get the smaller, but still reasonably sized fridge. This helped us keep from racking up more debt, save money on electric and save much needed space in our kitchen.

The last thing we do is turn down (or is it up?) the air conditioning. I never set it below 75 and that is only if it is above 105 outside. I feel the summer is for less clothing ( and more shaving, ugh), so I don't have a problem not wearing a lot around the house to keep the thermostat at a money saving temperature. Plus letting the kids run around in their diapers saves me a laundry pile!

These are not huge things but they do help out, and for us when every penny counts it's worth it!

4 comments:

  1. Our favorite Brit Com has the under-the-counter refrigerator. I would hate that, but they must be pretty common over there.

    Kerri

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  2. They are super common! The small frides were orignally used because houses were small. Now they just keep using them because the Brits don't believe in change!

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  3. I loved your post today about the refrigerator. It brings to mind a good reality check... most of us believe we want/need bigger and better things in life. Even our refrigerators these days "need" to be high tech and huge. But are we really paying for?? To keep food from spoiled.. do we really need posh vegetables? haha. Thanks for the reality check--I think I will take my dream frige off my "need" list and replace it with something more beneficial to my life.

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  4. Glad you enjoyed it! It's so easy to be swept up in the bigger is better mentality, but so often it's not better. I sure know I need a reminder every so often!

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