A Joyful Keeper

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The results are in! Let me recap while I tell you the results.

We took a two week period and set that aside for our experiment. At 11 am on the first Monday morning, we took our first meter reading, which was 8064. The rest of the week we just lived life normally - we used all of our appliances, but left them all plugged in on standby. The microwave was on all the time. The chargers for phones were left it, even if there wasn’t a phone charging at the end of it. The tv and sound system was on standby. Etc, etc, etc.

The following Monday at 11 am, we wrote down the meter reading again. It was 8201. Then we went through the entire house and turned EVERYTHING off at the power points - except the fridge and freezer, and the computer we use as a server. We snuck out to the meter box and looked at the little disc that spins around… it was going considerably slower!!! That was quite exciting, and so our week started. It was fun at first….. everyone kept checking up on each other, making sure lights were turned off the instant someone would leave the room (much to the annoyance of the person who was just getting something from another room and going straight back to his/her room). Lots of giggles….

The microwave was turned off at the power point (we don’t use the clock on it anyway), and plugged in as we needed it. The printers were the same. Only turned on if needed. Other than these small changes, we lived life as normal. We used appliances when we needed to. We used the computer when we needed to, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on it and turned it off right away. As the week wore on, we forgot at times to police each other so intently, and lights were left on a little longer before being discovered, as was the microwave which we actually had to move away from the wall to switch off!

The following Monday at 11 am we took the final reading, which was 8310.

One thing I would like to point out right away, is that our readings were not entirely accurate. Our electricity meter is not digital, it is just one of those number things that turns around and we just had to pick the number it was closest to. Since we only did it over a one week at a time period, I don’t think it would be as accurate as if we had done it over the period of say, one power bill.

None-the-less, it was still an interesting experiment. The first week we used 137 kWh, which, as I compared to our last bill, was on par with using about 19.57 kWh per day. The second week we used 109 kWh which was 15.57 kWh. So, yes, it was less in the second week, as would be expected. Working on 14c per kWh on our bill, we saved $3.92.

Then comes the next question. Was it worth it and what did we learn?! Is saving $3.92 worth saving per week? That adds up to approx $204 a year. Is this worth the hassle of not having things instantly work for us when we press the remote or switch on an appliance? Is it worth the time waiting for your computer to reboot after your last session? I don’t think I can really answer this for everyone. One thing I can say, is that it really wasn’t much effort to turn everything on and off at the power point once we got into the routine.

$204 a year is not a huge savings. But, every little bit adds up. I think to see greater savings, we would have to take more drastic measures. I don’t know the average of most people’s kWh usage. I’d be interested to know, so leave a comment, and if it is way lower than what we are doing, let us know how you did it!

 

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Don’t you just hate it when you have a little bit of dough left after you’ve made a pie, or cookies, or biscuits? I don’t like to throw it away… but sometimes I just don’t know what to do with it!

I was making Baking Powder Biscuits the other day, and as I put the last biscuit on the tray I looked at the leftover dough. Now I could have made about three more biscuits from it, but I didn’t want to just have a tray with three biscuits on it, and my oven doesn’t take more than one tray at a time.

So I decided to make two small pizza bases from the leftover dough and freeze them for later use.

I wrapped each “pizza base” in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. One day when I want a quick and easy lunch, I can take them out, put some tomatoes and cheese on them, and pop them in the oven! Yum!

 

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I got two pairs of old jeans given to me by a friend. I had thought of making them into jeans skirts, but I decided that a mat for the kitchen was more urgent… so, I started cutting….It went from this:

To this:

To this:

What I did, was basically cut as many 6″ squares from the old jeans as I could. I was able to cut higher on the front of the jeans than on the backs because of the pockets. (AFTER I threw the scraps away I found a good idea for using jeans pockets…. bother!) Then I got some fabric that I had bought a while ago for a little over a dollar per meter and which I have a LOT of, and cut 6″ squares of that as well. I cut 5″ square of batting (again, cut your batting into squares or rectangles as you go, then you have a pile when you need them), and got a nice little pile:

I then sandwiched the layers together and quilted the blocks with a simple line of stitches from corner to corner. One day I will do a tutorial on this so it is a bit clearer. It is a great beginners project. I sewed all the squares together leaving the raw edges out, snipped the raw edges and put it through the wash. You can see how nicely the raw edges have frayed in the picture of it hanging out on the line.

Now it is in its rightful spot under the sink, catching spills and keeping our feet warm! All from a few scraps of jeans and fabric…

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Sometimes I think we make life so complicated, at least I know I do! Even with school….. it is so easy to get caught up in all the curriculum that is available and spend a lot of money on things that we sometimes don’t even end up using. I know I have done this. There is often trial and error because I have not been able to look at the item beforehand, ie I’ve bought it on the internet. Not all homeschooling suppliers let you send it back if it is not what you expected. There are some out there that do have that policy, and that is a great help. I don’t mind if I get some things wrong, but I prefer that not to happen too often!

There is also a tendency to think we HAVE to buy things. There are a lot of resources available on the internet for free. Many of these are high quality and I am trying to incorporate them into our homeschool more and more each year. Some of my favorite sites for free homeschooling resources are:

http://amblesideonline.org/

http://oldfashionededucation.com/index.html

http://www.easyfunschool.com/

http://www.splashesfromtheriver.com/spelling/index.htm

http://www.learningpage.com/

I’d like to encourage you to use more of these resources in your homeschool. It will be much easier on your pocket book and your children will still receive a quality education. Oh, and don’t forget to download my Back to School Notebooking Pages Ebook, it is FREE!!!

This is the first time I am joining in on Frugal Friday! What fun!

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A few weeks ago I made a bag, and as I went, I dealt with the scraps of fabric.

I started out with this scrap of fabric. I needed a 6″ strip for one part of the bag, so I cut that first:

I still had a scrap of fabric left after that first cut, which normally would end up in the scrap box and maybe “one day” I would use it! Instead I cut another 2″ strip from it:

Then I cut the 2″ strip into 6″ sections and had enough at the end for a 2″ square:

I ended up with:

One 6″ square, seven rectangles of 6″x 2″, and two 2″ squares - all ready to go into a quilt!

I used to just throw the scraps into a scrap box, and think that “someday” I would use them for “something”! Now I do this and it is amazing how soon I get a pile of squares and rectangles that I can turn into a “free quilt”!!

I have piles of strips and squares that are ready to go into a scrap quilt, or in borders, whatever really…. once they are all ready like that, they can be easily used in so many different projects! Try it and soon you will have a shelf full of “ready to go” scraps like I do!