{"id":22,"date":"2009-10-23T09:54:34","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T08:54:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-03-13T10:39:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T09:39:54","slug":"10-ways-to-reduce-your-utility-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/10-ways-to-reduce-your-utility-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"10 ways to reduce your utility bills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even if you are not environmentally conscious you will no doubt be happy to lower the cost of those bills. In the last 6 months my gas and electricity for a two bedroom house has cost less than \u00a370 that\u2019s less than \u00a33 a week, here is how I did it.<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/a>
Andy Hamilton, looking special<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \n
  1. Close doors, windows and curtains at night. Go around the house and make sure that every door shut you will be surprised at how much warmer it will feel.\u00a0 Obviously an open window will just suck out the heat of the room but did you know that 20% of the heat in the room can be lost just from keeping the curtains open?<\/li>\n
  2. Wrap up indoors. Instead of turning up your heating up put on a jumper or sit under a blanket or duvet.<\/li>\n
  3. Have short showers instead of Baths.<\/li>\n
  4. Put tin foil or silver wrapping paper behind your radiators. This will help reflect the heat back into the room.<\/li>\n
  5. Turn off the radiators\/heaters that are not in use. I found that my kitchen was hot enough from using the cooker so I turned that radiator off; I don\u2019t sit in my hall or landing so I turned off those radiators and the spare room rarely gets used so the radiator in there is turned off too. With half of the radiators off in the house half the energy is used.<\/li>\n
  6. Turn everything off. Leaving electrical items on standby or mobile phone chargers plugged in still uses energy. You might as well be throwing money away.<\/li>\n
  7. Microwave more! If everyone in the country who was going to have a jacket potato microwaved it for 10 minutes instead of putting it in the oven we could close down Kingsnorth power station.<\/li>\n
  8. Don\u2019t overfill. Only boil enough water in the kettle that you need the same goes for boiling vegetables.<\/li>\n
  9. Dry clothes on a washing line, radiator or clothes horse. Tumble driers use load of electricity try not to use them at all.\u00a0 It is also worth remembering that if you hang shirts up straight after you have washed them they won\u2019t crease so much so you might not need to use an iron. Thus saving yourself even more money.<\/li>\n
  10. Let your hair dry naturally instead of using a hair dryer. Not only will this save you cash but it is kinder to your hair.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Even if you are not environmentally conscious you will no doubt be happy to lower the cost of those bills. In the last 6 months my gas and electricity for a two bedroom house has cost less than \u00a370 that\u2019s less than \u00a33 a week, here is how I did it. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[731],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3105,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/3105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selfsufficientish.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}