WHO KNEW You Can Save Energy by Making Easy Changes in Your Home Heating and Laundry Routines?

Here are some useful hints from a little book called 1001 Little Ways to Save Our Planet: Small Changes to Create a Greener, Eco-friendly World,” by Esme Floyd, a British author who specializes in lifestyle and health subjects.

In terms of home heating, Floyd suggests that readers “Get with the programme:”

• Invest in programmable thermostats that you can set to customize the heating in your house.  

• Turn down your thermostats by 1 or 2 degrees. This could reduce your heating bills by around 10% over the course of a season. 

• The 1 to 2 degrees difference usually isn’t enough to be noticeable. If it is, you can adopt one of Floyd’s other suggestions: “Add a Layer.”  I find that putting on a sweater and a pair of socks is usually enough to keep warm in a slightly cooler house. 

• Floyd also suggests that we “Draught a Plan” (sorry for the pun - it’s hers, not mine) to keep the cold outside air outside. Floyd calls them “Draught Excluders.” I’ve always called them door snakes. They work pretty well. Just be sure they’re long enough that the cold air doesn’t creep in at the corners. Sometimes a pair of socks, one stuffed in at each end, will do the trick.

As for laundry, here’s a tip:

• “Give hot washes the cold shoulder.”  Floyd says studies have shown that using cold or warm water gets your clothes just as clean as when using hot water. It also reduces energy use by up to 90%.

There are hundreds of other tips in this book, . We’ll take a look at some in future “WHO KNEW?” columns.