It’s a brand-new year and January is a great time to start making some small changes to your daily habits. Drink more water, walk more each day, drive less, use less power…it’s the little things we do that can add up to big changes and success. And it’s a time to start fresh and grow from past mistakes and the challenges you overcame in the previous year.
Last year we decided that as a family we were going to reduce our energy consumption. We talked about many different ways we can incorporate small changes to do this and have become pretty good at reminding each other to turn out the lights or dial down the heat. We also signed up to participate in BC Hydro’s Team Power Smart Reduction Challenge through which we hope to earn a $50 credit by reducing our usage by 10% over the course of a year. We started strong in September, but this winter our challenge had been challenged by forces beyond our control. Mainly, the flood.
We got some near record–setting rainfall roughly a month into our challenge. Usually no biggie, but for whatever reason this day was different. After putting in laundry 20 minutes earlier, I ran back downstairs with some more dirty clothes, and into over a centimetre of freezing cold water. In a panic my 12 year-old daughter and I started mopping up with and wringing out towels but it was completely ineffective. Once my husband got home 20 minutes later and I was able to source out a wet-dry vac we could finally make a little progress, but it took many, many trips emptying the vacuum. Once all the water was gone, we put out several fans and space heaters to dry up the remaining moisture…and several nails into the coffin of our reduction challenge that month.
We’ve not quite fully recovered. With last month being pretty chilly around here and the kids being off for Christmas break, we were having a hard time bouncing back. We were still mindful of our lights, we even got a remote for our Christmas lights to make them easier to turn on and off, and the new Blu-Ray player and TV we bought for Christmas bear the Energy Star seal. We also made use of the sleep timers on our televisions so they don’t get left on all night if we fall asleep.
Still, we went from a healthy 11% decrease in energy use to a 3%. But you know what? We got our basement dry, we had wonderful holidays, and we are still using less energy than the previous winter.
Now we are ready to start the second quarter of our challenge and we’re not going to let the winter get us down!
Have you signed up with Team Power Smart to participate in a reduction challenge? What struggles have you faced?
{This post is shared with you in partnership with BC Hydro}
