No wonder this country is Donald Ducked

We have been looking at efficiency over the past few months, because we haven't been great to be honest.

Heating wise, we are pretty good - and the gas bill is by a long way the lowest portion of the bill. In the last two months I have installed a curtain between the kitchen and the living room (means that we are not losing heat from the living room into the kitchen, and also stops cold draughts from the kitchen from coming into the living room);

I've also taken three electric rads out of use completely (one was being used purely to keep the freezer warm in the outhouse - as of three days ago, I have an external thermostat/weather station that I can use to tell me if things are really desperate in the outhouse and I can then put heat on if its needed - - not run it on the timer regardless of need.

Until recently, the oven was probably one of the biggest downfalls - we were terrible for putting it on to warm up, then going for a bath and not putting anything into it for half an hour or so; that habit has been knocked on the head.

I've got a remote switch for the wee one's TV so I can kill it completely so its not on standby all night. The desktop PC used to run 24/7, now its barely ever on (only when needed), and the same goes for the laser printer.

I've replaced three 50w halogen bulbs in the kitchen with 6w LED ones (so 150w is now 18w), and when I get a few quid spare the four 50w halogen spots in the bathroom are getting he same treatment).

Last night, I took the frontage off two of the kitchen cupboards, and stuffed underneath them with a load of spare loft insulation to kill the draughts coming in where pipes etc have gone out - and I have the cavity wall insulation inspection taking place in March.

I have started doing a lot more batch cooking (especially soups and stews), and need to get the slow cooker going more often again; freezer is full now, and for some stuff the microwave is plenty to heat it through rather than using the oven.

We have a really thick double skinned duvet (goose down, two parts that clip together) which we snuggle under and watch TV in bed, and the wee one has a similarly thick duvet as well as the hot water tank for company.

The tumble dryer has definitely been over used this year - mostly thanks to the rain we've had - however, in addition to the whirlygig in the back garden, I've also made space for (and have) three airers that can be propped up in the house.

Kettle is a one-cup at a time thing (Breville One Cup) so we only ever heat what we need. The only one we haven't done yet is mobile chargers - but as of today, they will be.

Don't get me wrong, we are not destitute by any means - things have just gotten increasingly tighter and we have let it happen to a degree; as soon as the arrears are paid off, we will be looking for a more realistic tariff.

 

Aye, to be fair we moved in here and paid the direct debits and didn't really track anything. The slightly annoying thing is that I recently decided to become all anal about it, and started monitoring usage and insulating anything that I could, and even made up the spreadsheet which works it all out for me (happy to share if it would help anyone). If I had been more switched on 18-months ago, there would be no arrears.

And in fairness to Eon, the energy/fuel has been used at some point by us, so it needs paying for.

 

We're really lucky mum - we've got windows that we can lock shut with an air gap open if that makes sense, so you get a constant air exchange without having to leave the windows wide open.

I don't remember the war (too young), but I do remember some of the power cuts of the 70's and 80's, and also remember the houses we were in - ours had a gas fire in the living room and nothing else; iron framed windows, single glazed, which would ice up on the inside during winter and icicles dropping off the windowsills on the insides.

My source of warmth in bed in winter was a labrador dog!

So yeah, things are tight, but we are sat here in a centrally heated, double glazed house with colour TV's in the bedrooms as well as the living room, and a permanent broadband connection to the outside world.

Not really hardship, is it?

 

Haybox cookery - that's where food is heated to temperature and then put in an insulated box to continue cooking its own heat, isn't it?

To be honest zigs, given that I work anything between 8 and 14 hours a day, it would probably prove a bit of a faff for us, and would end up being one of those things that we would do twice and then not bother with.

Our current consumption isn't stupidly high either really - we've arrived where we are mainly for two reasons, which is the initially too low direct debit set up by Eon, and then a wet summer where the tumble dryer has taken a beating. I see no reason why we can't clear these arrears over the coming months and get our monthly payment back to around £130-ish.