Ever hear that one about how the cobbler’s kids are often the ones with no shoes? Well, I had been guilty of my own home not being as energy efficient as possible until today. Don’t get me wrong, our energy bills average out to about $100 a month, but there will still simple things that we could do better to save a little energy and a few bucks. My husband and I were spurred on a little bit by an offer from our utility provider, Duke Energy, to send us 6 free compact fluorescent bulbs. Within a couple days our free bulbs and a guide to home energy savings had arrived from Duke (with a ton of excess packaging, but nobody’s perfect, right?). We had already replaced our most used lights with CFLs, but we quickly realized that we had more, less used, lights than the six free bulbs would cover. So, we put together a list of needed bulbs and headed to Home Depot where we picked up enough CFLs to cover all of the remaining lights, a new thermostat that offered more programming options and some new weatherstripping for our front door. About $150 later we were ready to go.

The bulbs are now in place, the new thermostat has been installed and the weatherstripping is up in time for cold weather. I’m not sure exactly how much money these improvements will save us, but at least I feel better in that we’re doing just about everything we can!