With the holidays on the horizon, families are gearing up and preparing their homes to make sure that it’s season-ready! From decorations to home maintenance, making sure your home is in tip-top shape for the holidays is important. But with everything going on, it’s easy for homeowners to overlook one of the most important aspects of home improvement: energy efficiency. End the year on a good note by implementing some of these simple energy efficient home solutions:
Change Your Light Bulbs
Replacing your light bulbs with a more environmentally friendly kind is one of the easiest ways to jumpstart your homes energy efficient makeover. Compared to incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) cost more upfront, but in the long run they pay for themselves…and then some! In fact, it is estimated that if every home in the United States replaced a single bulb with an efficient one, it would save enough energy to light 2 million homes for a year! Not only that, but combined, this would result in $460 million saved in annual costs. But most importantly, this would play a major role in benefiting the environment by preventing 6 billion pounds of harmful greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.
Turn Off the Lights
This one seems like a no-brainer, but by simply turning your lights and ceiling fans off when not in use, you’ll already be making major strides in helping your home be more energy efficient…all without even purchasing new windows or installing new equipment.
Beyond just your lights, make sure to switch your general appliances off. This means your air conditioning unit when you’re not home and even unplugging any lingering chargers that are not being utilized. Although the consumption is minuscule when not in use, combined and totaled for the entire year, this can make a difference to your overall spend.
Consider Energy Efficient Appliances
Energy efficient appliances are widely available now…and for good reason! While you don’t have to switch all of your appliances right away, you should always consider them as a viable option when replacing old ones. To make the process even easier, when shopping for those new home appliances, simply look out for the ones with the Energy Star certified sticker to help reduce your overall consumption and benefit the environment! You’ll be happy you did.
