Being frugal and eco-friendly go hand in hand, as both concepts take pride in avoiding waste, reusing, and seeking minimal cost without compromising quality. The challenge, however, is keeping the two concepts in close proximity to each other in order to create a resounding change in spending and lifestyle.
Home is the perfect place to make this happen as we can all relate to several areas where they meet daily:
Plastic
Plastic is everywhere and disposable plastic is a serious environmental problem. Not all varieties can be recycled easily and once sent to the landfill it could take hundreds, even thousands of years to decompose. At the same time plastic is convenient but imagine the yearly savings if it was only used when absolutely necessary. Suggestions include:
- Plastic-ware (forks, knives, spoons): Reuse or bring non-disposables back into regular use.
- Plastic cups: Use glasses and mugs.
- Plastic bags: For trash, reuse supermarkets bags; for lunches or snacks use reusable hard plastic containers instead.
- Plastic bottles: In place of buying bottled water pick up a reusable BPA free plastic or aluminum bottle to refill over and over.
Water
You may be thinking, “Won’t using non-disposables affect the water bill?” The truth is if we wash dishes differently we can use less plastic, conserve more water, and lower our monthly payments. For example, don’t let water run when scrubbing and preferably not when rinsing. Soak dishes in one dish pan, scrub, and have a second one available for rinsing. Other water-saving and eco-friendly tips include:
- When brushing teeth don’t let the water run.
- Catch the initial shower water that isn’t the desired temperature in a bucket. Use that ‘caught’ water to manually flush the toilet, clean the floors, or water plants.
- In the garden only water roots of plants and in between them.
- Do a periodic home water check by halting all usage, checking the water meter, waiting two hours, and checking the meter again. If a change occurred it’s likely a leak has sprung somewhere which needs attention not only because it’s wasting money and water but it could become a much larger issue when not fixed.
Electricity
Like water there are ways to be frugal with electricity for financial and environmental purposes.
- Replace incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, which are a bit pricier but save in the long run. Also, the more CFLs purchased the less need there will be for incandescents which greatly impact the environment during production.
- Cleaning HVAC (heating and air conditioning) filters will aide in air distribution and quality of air. Dirty filters re-circulate bad air and cause systems to work harder using up more energy and money.
Garden
Gardening shouldn’t be an expensive venture and there are many ways to make it even more ecologically friendly than most people think:
- Reuse food containers, egg cartons, and similar items as pots or seed starters.
- Make fertilizer from natural sources such as seaweed or compost.
- Repel unwanted pests and insects with herbs.
- Don’t cut grass short. Keep lawns a little higher so roots are shaded from sun making them stronger and needing less water.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jakob Barry writes for Networx.com, a growing community of homeowners and contractors sharing and monitoring home improvement projects together. He covers various eco-friendly home improvement topics.
Leave a Reply