My power bill is something I dread. In Nova Scotia, it is not uncommon for someone to get a $900 power bill in the coldest months of the year. There are many things that you can do to cut the steady flow of money being handed to Nova Scotia Power. Our biggest money saver is that we have wood heat in our home, so we don't have to use the electric heat. This cuts the bill in half, if not more. We've had this type of heat for years, so I started wondering what more I could do to lower this horrible drain on our finances. We've replaced the fridge (which you can read about in an earlier post), switched to energy saving light bulbs, starting doing laundry in cold water, etc. However, the biggest savings I have seen since we switched to wood heat has been the use (or lack of) of our dryer in the winter.
The month of January and February I decided to stop replying on the laundry dryer. Normally we would do one load of laundry per day, so it was on for about 45-50 minutes each and every day, when it was too cold to hang clothes outside. I went to my local hardware store and picked up two clothes drying racks, for $14.99 each, plus tax.
Every evening I would do my one load of laundry, and when it was done hang the clothes on the racks before I went to bed. We made sure to put the racks in the same room as the wood stove for faster drying (obviously a safe distance away from the wood stove). When I woke up in the morning, the clothes were 90% to 100% dry. I took them off the rack, and put them in the dry for 10 minutes with a dryer sheet for a "touch up", so they still were warm, wrinkle free and smelling lovely.
When my latest power bill arrived, by only making this one change we figured out the savings to be approx. $60.00 (for two months). Not only did my clothes racks pay for themselves, they doubled their value in the first bill alone!
