WOW!! Just checked my usage. I am feeling completely embarrassed and horrified! I mean, it's not like I never LOOKED at it before, I just kinda compared it to my own usage over previous months.
Get this... in an 1100 sq ft house with 2 adults and a dog, we averaged 58 FREAKING KWH/DAY for the last year! WTF?!? Even for October, when I don't think we ever had the AC on and it seemed like we barely had the heat on, we averaged 39 KWH/day (we live in Oklahoma, if you are wondering what kind of perverse climate results in both the AC and heat possibly being used in the same month).
Some thoughts...
- Our house is a rental, built in 1918 with original single-pane windows. I think some of the panes may have been replaced with plexiglass. Not even joking. So this is a big problem with heat and AC (but still doesn't explain the horrifying usage in October...)
- Everything is on electricity (heat, hot water, central air). Our landlord did replace our water heater last year with one that is much smaller and I assume more efficient, but I haven't really looked into that.
- We do a shit ton of laundry. I often say that once we have kids I have no idea how it will be humanly possible to process the amount of laundry because the two of us already have SO MUCH. We do both exercise most days so I am going to blame some of it on workout clothes... not sure where the rest comes from because I'm honestly pretty gross about rewearing things many times before I wash them. I was also good this summer about line drying things but have gotten super lazy about it lately.
- We have two old CRT TVs, one of which we honestly pretty much never use so I should probably just unplug it. And then give it away. (to be fair I did get it on Freecycle in the first place)
- We have a heat pump... I literally have no idea what this means or how it works (I grew up in Minnesota where we always had a furnace, and in Pennsylvania I had oil heat... which I guess ran... a furnace? can you tell I'm just a wee baby Mustachian? haha) I actually only found out what a heat pump was when one day I thought to myself, "waaaait a minute... there's no furnace in our basement! Where is the furnace?!?? IS THIS HOUSE BEING HEATED BY MAGIC?!?!?" Then I used Google to find pictures of the thing sitting outside our house that I thought was just an air conditioner. Whoa. I still have no idea where the "auxiliary heat" comes from but I seem to be hearing that that is very inefficient/expensive, so new life goal is to make sure that light comes on as rarely as possible this winter.
- My boyfriend takes unrealistically long hot showers. Not sure how big of an effect this has, and I hate to ask him to cut back because I know they make him really happy and he finds it really relaxing, buuuut maybe something can be done :)
Current plans:
- Look into that water heater timer thing someone mentioned, and/or just flip the breaker on and off
- Put plastic over our windows and get draft blockers for our front and back doors (you can actually see light under them)... I was already planning on doing these, but now that I know how out of line our electricity use is I really have a fire under my ass.
- Work on not running the dryer so much (maybe dishwasher too, but I think dryer use is more out of control/a priority)
- Unplug some shit
Any other suggestions for a renter?? I love reading about everyone else's badassity, it's inspirational!