The AC is Sucking our Money

It's hot in here. To be precise, it's 85 degrees in my living room, and that's the coolest room in the house. In less polite terms, this would be referred to as "hotter than Satan's butt crack".

Did I mention that the humidity is through the roof? I can tell because I have an afro. I shouldn't complain, as the high water content in the air is probably the only thing keeping me from bursting into flame.

This sucks. I would put on the central AC, but it is broken AGAIN. The repair guy is coming, but not until Friday afternoon (when it's supposed to be only 67 degrees here).

Thank the Good Lord for my ceiling fans. We have one in each of the three bedrooms, and one here in the combined living room and kitchen (this is the one that will be switched out for the stronger one bought this weekend.

I'm going to use this opportunity to remind myself how much money I am saving when I don't use the air conditioner.

I've been distracting myself with research. Poking about in our records I see that the four ceiling fans we have use very little energy. The two bigger ones use only 82 Watts per hour (W/h), while the two smaller ones use 63 W/h. In contrast, the central air uses about 3500 W/h.

Did you know that fans only cool people and not rooms? It's true! I found it all over the inter webs! This means that I can shut off any fan in a room that's empty.

Here's some math about how much I'm spending to cool myself right now with the living room fan:

82 W/h = 0.082 kW/h
$0.06712/kWh x 0.082 kW/h = $0.0055/h


See that? That's a little over a half penny per hour.

If we ran all four ceiling fans at once (which would only happen if the four of us were in four different rooms) the math would look like this:

290 W/h = 0.290 kW/h
$0.06712/kWh x 0.290 kW/h = $0.0194648

Let's round up and call this 2 cents per hour.

Now let's look at how much it costs to run the AC:



3500 W/h = 3.5 kW/h
$0.06712/kWh x 3.5 kW/h = $0.23492

So, around this down to 23 cents per hour.

Hey, look! It's a ten-fold difference!
Let's look at the math for a whole day:

Four fans:

$0.019/h x 24 h = $0.456

That's less than 50 cents.

AC:

$0.23492/h x 24 h = $5.63808

Yeah. Over five and a half bucks. For one day. Hm.

This fiver looks different now, huh?



Now let's pretend that you did this for a month worth of days over the summer.

Four fans:
$0.456 x 31 = $14.136

Around 15 bucks.

AC:
$5.62808 x 31 = $174.47

OOOOhhh! So THAT'S why our energy bill explodes every summer! I get it now.

Does this mean that I won't be using my AC any more?

No. Not in the least. What it does mean is that I am only going to use it as a last resort. For example, when the temperature in the living room just climbed to 86 degrees. Oh, Lord.

Asking Can Save You Money

Remember yesterday when I saved us $113?
If you didn't see that one, here's the recap: Hubby and I wanted to change out our kitchen light. He wanted it done by an electrician (who quoted us $113 for the job). I convinced him that we could do it ourselves. We installed the new light, it looks lovely, and our house is still intact.

I suggested that we use some of our savings to buy a matching ceiling fan for the living room (our kitchen and living room are essentially one big room). Here's what we currently have:

The picture is a little blurry because I was too lazy to get up and turn the fan off for the photo. You get the idea, though. It's nice, but it's not very powerful at all, and it really doesn't go with the kitchen light we just put in.

Here's what the new kitchen light looks like from where I'm sitting right now. Can you tell how proud I am? Can you?

So, off we went to Lowes yesterday. I like Lowes. I can get a decent price there, and unlike Home Depot, they don't ignore me just because I have boobs.

In the lighting department, Hubby and I asked after a few different fans that we liked. Our favorite was a Hunter Regalia 60" fan in brushed nickel. Not only was it a nice fan, but the tag said it was on sale for only $79.98 (Down from $160).

Hey! Guess what! It was out of stock!

We asked about a few other acceptable options, and hey! Guess what! They were out of stock, too!

Our gruff salesman offered to call the other area Lowes and ask them to hold one of the Regalia for us. Here's the problem: at the other store it would cost us $127.20 (the sale price at the other store). Why the nearly 50-buck difference? I asked that. What I got was a slightly vague answer about inventory amounts.

I personally felt that if the tag was still hanging there, they should have found us one for $79.98. Gruff salesman disagreed. Gruffly.

Note: I imagine that this guy is probably pretty nice when not being hounded for something he doesn't have on a super busy holiday weekend. I don't hold this incident against him.

Today we bit the bullet and went to get the Regalia at the other store. On a whim, I asked again about the drastic price difference.

This turned out to be a great idea.

Awesome Lowes employees to the rescue! We had, not one, but THREE guys in Lowes vests helping us. The first was from another department. He not only helped us find TWO knowledgeable people from the lighting department, but he stayed until everything was resolved. The other two guys hopped on the computer and telephone to find the website price, and the price hanging in the other store. In the end these wonderful people walked my family and I up front to make sure we got the $79.98 price.

I love these people.

I love our new fan.

I'm also gonna love installing it ourselves. I can't wait to tell Hubby.

Let There Be Lighting Fixture

Our old kitchen table was small and sat in the middle of the kitchen. Now that I got us the bigger kitchen table, it sits over to the side along the window. The problem is that we are left with a hanging light fixture in the middle of the room that doesn't look like it belongs there.

(I am so sorry. The pic I took of the hanging lamp managed to get deleted. You're not missing much).

Husband has a superstition-like fear of working with anything electrical, so he asked an electrician to come and give an estimate on switching out the light fixture (among several other things). The electrician patiently explained that it is a simple job that he could quickly take care of, but that his company would charge us $113. Or I could do it myself.

Note, this is just the installation. I bought the light already at Lowes for $60.

Guess which one I chose. Just guess.

So I studied up. I read the instructions, watched YouTube videos, consulted knowledgeable friends, etc. It should be an easy matter of black wires to black, white to white, and ground to green.

This morning a friend watched our cubs for us, we turned off the power to the kitchen and got started. After I took down the old light I realized that the wires I had were not quite as described (I had white and red instead of the white and black I was told to expect). A quick call to my step-dad reassured me that all was okay. (By the way, my step-dad, Jeff, is awesome. In every way.)

The new light is in, the house isn't on fire, and neither husband nor I received any sort of electricity-related injuries.

Isn't it pretty? Here's another, even prettier shot of the light hovering warmly over my husband and youngest son.

My husband has declared that the hassle of working with me for the better part of an hour that it took me to figure out how to hang the darn thing is in no way worth the $113 we saved.

I think that the money we saved can be used to buy a matching ceiling fan for the living room.

No way am I paying for installation on that one, either.

Saving the Vacuum

Back in my Bride Days, I was thrilled and a little lost when it came to registering for gifts. Hubby and I had been living together for two years, so we had accumulated some of the things we would need for survival in the domestic wild. (Curiously enough, we only had one pot. I think that's because neither of us could really cook.)

I knew one thing I wanted for a certainty - a vacuum. We lived in a little, one-bedroom, Bronx apartment, with hardwood floors and a consistent layer of dust that perpetually settled over everything. I was tired of sweeping.

As a bridal shower present, my hubby's mom got me a Bissel Lift-Off. It's red. I love red. Even my sofa is red.

Vacuums are supposed to last 8-10 years. Everyone I have spoken to about this has wound up replacing theirs after around five years. Mine is seven years old, and has taken Very. Hard. Use. The poor thing has had to be fixed a couple of times.

The cheap part comes in here.
1) Fixing it is cheaper than replacing it.
2) Fixing it myself is cheaper than having someone else fix it.

Through the power of YouTube, I was able to replace a broken belt.
Through the power of an online forum on small appliance repair, I was able to find and tighten a loose wire.
Through the power of my father-in-law and his neighbor, a broken switch was replaced.

Total investment: about 5 bucks.

I'm also saving on filters by cleaning them out myself.
Before:

And the EXACT SAME FILTER after a wash in the tub and some time drying in the sun:

Investment: $0

Oh, and with the removal of a few screws, I can keep the brush clean, too.
Before:

And after:

The BEST part (other than saving a couple hundred bucks on a new vacuum) was this guy helping me. He even brought his own plastic screwdriver. The DIY force is strong with this one.

Take What You Pay For

My toddler and I went out to brunch with a friend this morning to celebrate finding daycare for next year. I ordered an egg white omelet, loaded with spinach and broccoli. She ordered a burger and fries.

At the end of the meal, I noticed something. I had two slices of dry, whole wheat toast left on my plate. She had two thick slices of tomato and a chunk of lettuce on hers. Instead of turning these into trash, I asked for a to-go box.

Realizing I have a couple of eggs in my fridge that need to be boiled today, I'm thinking egg salad sandwiches for lunch tomorrow!

Even if you don't feel like finishing everything on your plate, YOU PAID FOR IT. If you leave it, it's trash. If you take it, it's INGREDIENTS.

Doing Laundry on the Cheap

We do a lot of laundry here. A lot. Somehow the boys go through about 3 dozen outfits a day. Okay, that may be hyperbole, but so is our amount of laundry.

We have an HE front-load washer. HE stands for High Efficiency, meaning that the machine uses less water to do its job. The lower water level means we have to buy specific soap without the extra ingredients that encourage foaming (BTW, foaming isn't necessary for cleaning your clothes). For six years we have been using the All Free-and-Clear HE detergent. Even buying it at Walmart, this stuff gets pricey.

See what I mean? That's the big size, so there's enough detergent in there for 110 loads. At $12 for this bottle, that's about 11 cents per load (assuming that all loads use the minimum amount of soap. Given that my children are in love with mud, this is not likely.)

To the INTERNET!
In my search for a home-made laundry detergent I found a ton of recipes, but all of them were basically the same. I chose to follow the exact steps I found on The Duggar Family's website.

As an aside, I watched their show maybe twice. I know that some folks have plenty of criticisms with their choice of reproductive frequency, but I simply don't care either way. Anyone who can have a bazillion kids and still be debt free can teach me their laundry detergent recipe any day.

Back to Walmart!

For those of you playing along at home, buying one of each of these three items cost me a total of $7.59 (not counting tax). According to the recipe, it makes enough detergent for 640 loads of laundry. This is about 1 cent per load. Yeah. Less than a tenth the cost of the All.

Hm...I wonder how long it takes to make. Let's try it.

First is the lovely task of grating the Fels-Naptha. Out comes my mandolin slicer with the nifty shredding bladey thing. (Technical term.)

To be clear, many of the recipes I looked at mentioned using equipment that you didn't plan on cooking with in the future "just in case". None said it was mandatory, or stated any specific danger. I chose not to. My reasoning is that it is soap - not plutonium. Have you noticed what we use to clean our dishes? Yeah. Soap. If having extra equipment makes you comfortable, go for it. I'm too cheap to.

Once I got started grating the soap, it took maybe five minutes (with frequent breaks for sipping my coffee. I started this project at 8:00 a.m.)


Almost immediately I realize that we have a problem. Fels-Naptha has a STRONG perfume to it. I happen to be allergic to most perfumes (which is why we went for the Free-and-Clear detergent originally). Okay. A little allergy medicine and I'm re-evaluating this. In the end I decided to continue. My logic is that this one bar of soap is ultimately going to be diluted into 10 gallons of laundry detergent, of which I will only be using 1/4 cup for an entire load of clothes. If my shirts and stuff smell strongly of perfume after being washed in this, I will be surprised.

For the record, next time I will be using a bar of unscented castile soap. It will be about $4 a bar instead of the $1 dollar for Fels-Naptha, but I doubt it will break the bank.

After the soap was grated, I had to stop taking pictures. This is because I had a toddler who was convinced that this was really shredded cheddar cheese, and that I had been holding out on him. There was no way for me to stir the pot with the soap, wrestle away an angry kid, AND hold a camera.

The total time commitment was way less than I thought it would be. Start to finish, this project took me a half hour. Grating the soap took five minutes, melting it in the water took 20, and mixing everything together in bucket took five. Not bad.

The five-gallon bucket is resting in the garage, and today I'm finishing up the last of the store-bought soap. By tomorrow I should be able to test this and give you a report.

No More Cooking Spray

As I started trying to watch my intake of fats and oils, I took to using cooking spray. I now keep running out of cooking spray. When I decided to use my Google-Fu skills to find an alternative, I came across a lot of people making their own cooking spray using water and oil. Most advocated using distilled water. So, I looked up how to distill water. As I was wading through an increasingly complicated process, a friend recommended a Misto Olive Oil Sprayer.

Hey. I like olive oil as much as the next girl. Probably a little bit more.

So, off to the Bed Bath and Beyond. Ten bucks later I don't have to EVER BUY COOKING SPRAY AGAIN. Awesome.