With the heat of summer is still very much here in many parts of the world and the cooler temperatures of fall and winter will be arriving very soon, there’s no better time to start thinking about how you can make your home more energy efficient. So while you might rather do a cute crafting project this weekend, it could be well worth your while to spend your time taking on a few chores that will help you see an improvement in your energy usage and your utility bills.
To show you how this can be done, here are three things to do this weekend to make your home more energy efficient.
Do Your Own Energy Audit
Before you can take any real steps toward making your home more energy efficient, you first need to know what areas of your home are struggling with wasting or using a lot of unnecessary energy.
To do your home home energy audit, Adrienne So, a contributor to Wired.com, recommends that you walk through your home and look for areas where a lot of energy is being used or wasted. Look for rooms with a lot of things plugged in or big items that require a lot of energy to run. If you need help, there are a lot of different apps available to help you, or you can get professional help.
Buy One New Appliance
After doing your home energy audit, you may have realized that some of your bigger home appliances aren’t as energy efficient as they could be. By replacing them, you could use a lot less energy and save yourself a lot of money in the long run. However, buying all new appliances can get very expensive.
One way to combat this is to try to buy just one new appliance this weekend. According to Jennie Dusheck, a contributor to LifeHacker.com, your first priority should be any appliances that don’t run off electricity, as electric appliances generally use less harmful energy to run. Additionally, if you don’t already have a smart thermostat, installing one of these could be a good project for this weekend as well.
Do Some Cleaning
For the appliances that you are keeping in your home, something you can do to make them more energy efficient than they currently are is to clean them off.
According to George O’Malley, a contributor to Habitat For Humanity, taking your vacuum and cleaning off the coils and grills of your appliances like your refrigerator and oven as well as cleaning off the vent for your return air filter will help to make all of these things use less energy to run since they’ll now be getting better air flow.
If you want to spend this weekend making your home more energy efficient, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find projects that will do just this.
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