Hello.

Our house is 1500 square feet in the sub tropical city of Boca Raton, Florida.

The weather has been amazingly great lately, so there is no reason for heating.  It did get down to the 30's and 40's last week and a few weeks before that but by closing the house up completely and dressing in layers and sleeping with a hoodie on we were able to stay toastie warm.

Our house doesn't require a lot of energy, yet for the most part our electric bill is always over $150 even in the winter.  Our utility prices have gone up recently so I had begun to cut down on some things earlier, but with my husband and the other two kids here somethings just could not be done.

with them gone I have

Shut off or unplugged all electrical equipment. This includes all tv's dvd players, computers, cell phone chargers and the microwave.  These things only get plugged in when they are being used and are immediately unplugged or shut off at the main outlet switch.  I don't know if it is saving me any money yet.  January's bill was only  $91 so something must be going okay.

another thing I did was shut off the pool pump at the switch so that it doesn't go on every day.  Now that the weather has been cooler I am not having my algae problem, so I run the pool pump, brush the pool and run the automatic cleaner just twice a month.  I haven't put any chemicals in lately but I will have to soon, or the lady and the pool store will tell me off and let me know that the walls of my pool are going to be destroyed if I don't do something soon.

I turned down my refrigerator from 4 to 2.5. The ice cream started getting smooshy, so I had to turn it back up to 3.  There isn't much in the refrigerator so it doesn't really run too often.

I only have one light on at a time in the house at night. which often means I have to go back to the last room I was in to switch off the light when I turn on the next one. I do most of my reading outside on the back patio day or night.  The table lamp has a 40 watt bulb in it and it is fine.

The lights in my bathroom and my closet have gone out because of some electrical problem, so they never go on. 

The light fixture in the dining room only has one working thingie on the track.  I haven't quite figured out how to replace them properly, but I will get on that.

In the kitchen we have more electrical problems, so there are usually only three lightbulbs working there at a time.

I try to do all my cooking and cleaning in the day time when I can see so that I don't have to go in there too much after dark.

I am going to move the dining room table in to the family room cause there is a glass door there and there is plenty of light right up until full dark for eating.

I have begun to try to think about air drying my clothes. We went to IKEA and I picked out a really outrageously big indoor air dryer, but when we got home, we realized we had put it down when we put something else on our cart.

I have successfully dried two loads of clothes on the small accordian style dryer that my daughter had for her hand washing clothes.  I also wear the same clothes over and over again during the week so I only ever have one load of clothes to wash.

During the week when my oldest daughter is at her boyfriend's anyway I shut off the hot water heater by the switch. It has been set to 120 as it should be.  I only turn it on like 45 minutes before my shower and turn it back off. The water usually stays warm enough for two days.

I only do dishes once a day so I only have to heat water once.

On Thriftyfun this person says they put a pan of water in the oven after they turn it off to retain heat. I baked a cake today and have water absorbing the heat right now.

I usually use only the microwave and the toaster oven for cooking.  I always use lids when cooking on the stove.

We also turn our porch light off, if it ever actually gets turned on.

If anyone has any more ideas, let me know.

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 So, for very very many reasons I am now an empty nester.  It has been a couple of months, but I am only just now getting used to the idea.  After the initial lethargy and depression and feelings of uselessness I am finally coming around and getting energized.

Early in the year I read the blog about the teachers who tried to eat on $1 a day. I think if they had planned better they would have had a much easier time of it, as many people pointed out.  I figured I should do something similar, but have not been able to.

What I have figured out I need to do, not only for my own sanity, but also to help out my husband with expenses since he has the younger kids now.

I have a job at a local hospital with a fairly low wage but with full benefits.  my take home pay is like $1700.  I figured that if I pay for the house and my car insurance, the electric and the home phone and lived the rest of the month on what was left I would be very useful indeed.

So the budget looks like this

Take home pay       $1700

Mortgage payment $1100 (includes tax and insurance)

Phone & internet     $ 114 (just reduced by AT&T)

Electric                      $   91 (during the winter)

Car insurance          $  80 (part of multi car plan)

my cell phone          $  15 (part of family plan)

So that leaves me $300 to spend on gas for the car and home things, like food etc.

When you consider that I normally spend over $600 on groceries when the kids are here, you can imagine that I have some rethinking to do.

I have always been frugal. Raised on welfare by my grandmother who lived through the depression in Southern California where there was always a drought and a recession or two.

But now I have to go beyond creative.

My next blog will talk about ways I have cut down on energy use.

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