Check out these 5 ways to save money on your energy bill. Ways I learnt the hard way so you don’t have to!

#1 Tumble dryer lesson learnt

I absolutely love using my tumble dryer! It is so easy and convenient but once I had a smart meter fitted for my electricity I realised just how damn expensive it actually is to run! I worked it out at £1.24 per full load. Which totally knocked me sideways to be honest. I decided to try my very hardest to use it as little as possible and instead invested in a 3 tier indoor air dryer. Yes it did cost £19.99 but it will pay for itself in 16 loads of washing and should last me a lifetime. So a pretty good investment in my eyes.

Now I’m not going to lie I will still be using my tumble dryer, I am not throwing her out completely! (Who am I kidding I’d sell her rather than waste the ££) One thing I absolutely love is fluffy towels. Showering is such a mission when you have a chronic illness or disability so I feel like you have to treat yourself a little to make it that bit nicer on yourself, my treat is having gigantic fluffy towels to wrap up in after. When you dry towels on the line outdoors or indoors I find they seem to go a little crispy and scratchy whereas the tumble dryer fluffs them up a treat.

Fluffy towels for a fraction of the cost

I did a little research and found that apparently if you put a clean dry towel in with your load it can reduce your drying time a fair amount. I thought I’d give this little magic trick a go. 20 minutes later I opened the dryer to check on progress and noticed that whilst the towels were not yet dry they were fluffy already. I grabbed them out and hung them on the dryer over night and they are perfect. As good as if they were dried fully in the machine. Doing it this way saved me nearly a whole pound, it used just 27p of electricity!

As for the magic trick the once dry towel was quite damp so I imagine it was doing its job. However I will have to try it another day to see if it actually reduces the length of a full load as promised.

#2 I’ve only lived here five years…

The other day whilst looking in a little used hall cupboard I spotted a random switch, one I’d never seen before and had no idea what it did. Having watched a lot of kids tv recently with my nephew I have learnt that you don’t mess with random switches because you never know what might happen! Turns out it wasn’t a really cool time travel device but instead the economy 7 override for my water heater.

For 5 whole years I’ve been heating my water on my day rate (day rate – 17.34p/kWh night rate – 8.31p/kWh) That was a rather rude awakening! No wonder my electricity bill has been higher than I would expect for a single person that sleeps at least 50% of each day living in a small bungalow.

I checked my bill and compared to last month my kWh usage has gone up but the actual cost in pounds and pence is down so hopefully that is a good sign. Will look forward to seeing the comparison at the end of this month.

# 3 Economy 7

Generally I use the most electricity during day rate hours. It would make more sense for me to have a more standard tariff except for one problem. Storage heaters. I love my little home, it is my sanctuary it’s only downside is the heating. My bungalow is rented and the housing association has made it very clear they have no intention of upgrading any of their properties with storage heating to central heating. It is just something I have to live with.

Nothing I can do about that so I have decided to try and do more of my electricity use during night rate hours to save some cash. I’m pretty paranoid about making too much noise and annoying the neighbours so have avoided using the washing machine and tumble dryer over night. According to my smart meter my 7 cheaper hours of electricity use are from 01:00 to 08:00. My washing machine has a delay timer on it so I can get a load of washing set to turn on at 06:30 it will finish within night rate hours saving me a a fair amount of cash and I’ll be able to get a good night sleep not waking up in panic and fear it’s all making too much noise (Anxiety sucks!)

#4 Standby Mode

I am the worst for leaving everything on standby mode. Literally the worst. When I lived with my parents it was something I’d get picked up on all the time. After having lived on my own for 11 years rebelling and wasting a ridiculous amount of money on wasted electricity I feel it is time to take a leaf out of my parents book and start actually turning stuff off!

Confession time, I’ve probably only switched my desktop PC off a handful of times since I moved here. Which I’ll be the first to admit is a disgusting waste of money and drain on the environment.

I am going to ensure that I switch off my PC every time I am not using it for the entire month of October. If you force yourself to do something for at least 30 days it becomes habit. Here is hoping that is true.

I will also try to remember to turn off appliances at the wall where possible to save on my electric bill this month. That said it is a lifelong bad habit and I can be lazy. Seeing if there is a significant difference in next months statement will be a good motive especially with Christmas creeping up on us again.

#5 Time to get out the dressing gown

The weather has finally taken a turn. As a truly British person I have gone from discussing how overbearing the heat is to how the evenings are starting to get a tad chilly. I have seen a lot of posts on Twitter about whether its okay to turn the heating on yet, which of course it is if you want to! I outright refuse to turn mine on until every last other option is exhausted. Instead I’ve gotten out my dressing gown.

Its better to put on a jumper or change into fleecy pyjama bottoms and put on a dressing gown than to spend money on the heating. I tend to finally give in and put the heating on when despite being wrapped up from head to toe the icicles start forming on my nose.

I’ve been incredibly lax in wasting electricity. I’m very excited about seeing the difference in my bill these small changes make!