No Impact Week: Energy

Let's get to it! Steps for today:

1. Assess current energy consumption habits. Walk from room to room in your home. List everything in each room that uses energy to operate. Put a star next to any item that you would ordinarily use in the remaining four days of your No Impact Experiment.


Kitchen
-toaster*
-radio*
-oven*
-refrigerator*
-overhead light*
-cabinet light*
-window lights
-lights above sink*
-rice cooker (2)
-hand mixer
-blender
-food processor
-crock-pot

Dining Room
-overhead light*
-battery charger
-calculator*
-cell phone (2)*

Living Room
-overhead light*
-computer (2)*
-ipod (2)
-ipad*
-DVD player* (remote)*
-lamp*
-record player*
-TV*
-VCR (remote)
-receiver* (remote)*
-battery alarm clock*
-point & shoot camera*
-wii + two controllers
-digital converter

Office
-overhead light*
-lamp*
-printer
-minolta SLR
-nikon SLR*
-external hard drive
-bass w/ amp
-pedometer

Bathroom
-hair dryer*
-overhead light*
-overhead fan*
-beard trimmer*

Bedroom
-overhead light*
-lamp*
-small floor fan*

Random
-stairwell light*
-hallway light*
-outdoor lights*
-lights in basement*
-washer*
-dryer*
-flashlights (4)
-camping lantern
-stud finder
-drill
-bike lights (4)
-vacuum

2. Next to each starred item, indicate if you are going to eliminate or mitigate your usage of that item.

We will make it a point to mitigate all of our electricity use. We have also pulled out more candles and will use those to help light the house in the cold, dark winter evenings. We also have dimmers on our main lights that we will use. Also always, we air dry many of our items on our basement line dryer.

3. Unplug! Turn it off. Power down. Go off the grid. For the truly adventurous, turn off your electricity completely (Ha! It's winter and I need a little artificial light since the sun sets at 4). I think we have to try this in the summer. :) The hard part will be to not cook. I love cooking in the winter. It warms the house and our bellies. Saturday, we'll put something in the crock-pot instead (oops, didn't star it) so we can keep the oven off.

We use power strips and will work hard to keep things unplugged when not in use and those power strips off. We also have CFLs in our lights/lamps.

4. Continue to reflect on your energy use (though they do tell us to blog everyday...taking up energy...hmmm...

5. Five things for which we are grateful:
   1. No snow today
   2. Sunlight (allows me to keep the lights off and the shades open!)
   3. Comedy
   4. Music
   5. Good food -- as always!

Peace!