I met our utility goal!

**MomToTwoBoys** · 07-11-2008, 12:38 PM

June was our month to finally buckle down on our utilities.

Our bill from April-May:

Electricity ............................... (GST: $3.65) .... $ 73.24
Natural Gas ............................ (GST: $3.40) .... $ 68.00
Water .......................................................................... $ 47.97
Sanitary and Storm Sewer .......................................... $ 36.05
Subtotal ......................................................................... $ 225.26
Total GST ................................................................... $ 7.05
Total Current Charges .................................................. $ 232.31

Our bill from June-July:

Electricity ............................... (GST: $3.03) .... $ 60.69
Natural Gas ............................ (GST: $1.27) .... $ 25.47
Water .......................................................................... $ 42.15
Sanitary and Storm Sewer .......................................... $ 32.22
Subtotal ......................................................................... $ 160.53
Total GST ................................................................... $ 4.30
Total Current Charges .................................................. $ 164.83

Our biggest contributions to cutting back:

1) Turning off all the power bars and unplugging all the appliances we didn't need on all the time. Now we just leave the refridgerator and stove plugged in.

2) Only doing laundry once a week, twice at max. I never do partial loads anymore and I use the low heat setting on my dryer. I stopped drying clothes more than once when they were already dry to remove the wrinkles. In other words, I drastically changed my laundry habits.

3) I cut back drastically on the extra bath after the shower. I also stopped standing in the shower for so long. I only take the extra bath once a week instead of every day. I also started showering every other day.

I wish it could stay this way forever but sadly with the way that the weather is here, it can't.

But I am so stoked because we dropped our utility bill below the 190 that I had set out for!

**Russ** · 07-11-2008, 12:44 PM

Congrats!!
I know this may sound stupid, but I'm looking forward to getting my electric bill this month to see if we meet our goal.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 07-11-2008, 12:51 PM

I'm actually like that now. I've been checking my email like every hour for the last three days because I was so excited about getting the bill to see how well we've been doing.

**Ceashels** · 07-11-2008, 12:55 PM

THats a lot of behavioral changes to make all at once. Congratulations!

**frugalfriend** · 07-11-2008, 01:01 PM

Way to go!!

Keep up the good work!

I'm working on ours, too. I just figured out our average utility total for each month is $348.00. This is for gas, electric, water/sewer (really high in CO), phone and trash pickup. That seems high to me, so I'm going to try to bring it down even more.

**LexTysMommy** · 07-11-2008, 01:26 PM

Great job!!!

When I first started this last year I had my son who is 9 run out and check the elctric meter every day. Days I didnt run laundry,dishes or a/c we used 9 therms a day. We made ourselves more aware of what we were using that way. Our best month was 324 therms of electric. SADLY we got out of that habit and has increased. will try again.