How I cut our electric bill from $900 a month to $120!

 When living in CA with my family, the one thing that was a "strain" for our family was our electric bill. ( I also met others who were having difficulty) I remember this one lady at Walmart who was checking my husband and I out. She was inquiring about if we were going camping. I informed her we were setting up our "bedroom" for our back deck (more on that later) She went on to say that she had just recently had her electricity shut off. She was simply trying to stay cool and in the process ran up a huge bill like we did. I shared some of my energy saving  tips with her, and went on my way.   

             Continuance of our story...

Even though we lived in a large 2 story home, we didn't use the upstairs AC. We only used the AC downstairs. 

However, even with partial use of AC, our electric bill was still outrageous.  At one point we owed over $3000 to the electric company! (We were on a balance payment plan)   

So what did I do to make such a drastic change in our electric bill? Several things. A couple of things may look familiar to you, however, I bet there is one that is not:)

       Lets start with the dryer!

                     A dryer uses a lot of energy.  One way I cut our electric bill was to unplug my dryer all summer. I did not use my dryer all summer long. Instead, I used a clothesline to dry my clothes.
                                                   

              
There are many different types of clotheslines. You can buy them or build them. If you live in an area where you cannot use a clothesline (You probably should move) then go to Walmart and for under $20 you can use one of these...
                                                        

Here is my towels drying. And yes, we have moved from the "gated community" that didn't allow clotheslines outside!

Here is a picture of a homemade one. So pretty!

Photo Credit unknown

Next, I used drapes to block out the sun until the sun had moved 
around. Our home had a wall that mostly consisted of 2 large window doors.  Here is a pic below.
                                                   

Our living room

As you can see, I have the curtains pulled open (for photo) However, during the summer from around 10:00AM until 4:30PM I kept them closed. If not, our living room heated up greatly. The drapes were purchased at Target. Great investment! I did the whole house. You can buy many different types of drapes.
  This picture below is a picture of curtains and drapes. Curtains are thinner and are not going to do a great job at keeping the sun out. Drapes however are much heavier. They work very well. You could also use shades under your curtains, or just use shades. I went with drapes since we did not have windows. Our whole front wall was 2 large doors that opened up onto our back deck.

Finally, I get to the source that greatly, greatly cut our electric bill. Not using our Central air!! However, without it, our house at times was well over a 100 degrees inside! Tooo hot!

So how did we handle no AC? Let me share a couple of different ways we survived:)

1: We bought cheap window fans and put them into the windows at night. We left them on during the night to blow cool air into the house during the night. This lowered the temperature, so come morning our house was not already 90 degrees (did not raise electric bill hardly at all)  2: We "camped out" at night.I turned our back deck into our "bedroom". Thats right. For a great part of the summer, we slept under the stars (on air mattresses) falling asleep after a movie and popcorn! 

Here is my son, Josh. It is morning:)

     I set up a "movie station" with our laptop and an old table.

                                                         
Kids enjoying the air mattresses during the day.

     

You can also pull out your own mattress and use that. Just lay a rug down first. We did that also.

One more photo

One summer, we bought a 4 man tent and put our mattresses in that. Again, sleeping under the stars / staying cool!

A few times the kids had sleep overs with their friends, and we even had guest who came with their kids and joined in:)

Add a box fan (one you use in your window) and you will be waking up feeling really cold:)

Night time



During the day, the kids played in our pool, or spent time at the river. Drapes kept the heat out, and the fans helped cool off our house during the night. 

I remember the PGE man asking me on the phone what steps I took to pay off our bill / keep our bill down. I gladly shared with him my strategy to staying cool and cutting cost.

I hope this has also been helpful to you:)

Sandy