Making a difference

We recycle through freecycle.  It's a yahoo group and is available in most areas.  You list what you are offering and people email in response.  You pick someone to receive your items and arrange a pick up.
We have found new homes for furniture, clothing, toys, computers, all sorts of stuff.

We also compost and just put a timer on our water heater.  The timer tells the water heater when to turn on and thus we heat water when we use it rather than having it sit hot all day long.

I do errands in one trip, mapping out where I have to go and thus save gas, time and aggravation.

We keep lights off in rooms we aren't using, this is a left over from my mother.

Rather than heating the whole house on cool nights we use electric blankets.  We are warm and snuggly and it also keeps the heating bill down.
We close off rooms at night that we are not using and only heat/cool the main areas of the house.  We don't have central heat and air so it's easy for us to do.  Our power bills stay lower than anyone we know.

We share smiles with strangers, let people in line ahead of us, say something nice at ever opportunity.

We are always making a difference in the world, question is, what kind of difference??

Smiles,
Donna

Re: Making a difference

I love this perspective of making a difference on the individual level!

We use down comforters - no electric and just as warm in 5 minutes, and I love crawling into cool sheets and heating them up with my body.

Blankets on the water heater, that helps a lot, now insulation for the pipes is next.

We use radiant heat panels rather than the fuel oil furnace our house came with - it's a rental, so we can't make radical changes, but they run at 425 watts and cost nearly nothing. Our year round flat rate electric bill is $110.00, which is very good for a 2 bedroom house in this area, a house full of computers and cooking and two householders with friends and animals and plants and everything is electric (heat, water, stove).

I'm currently looking at my job in this light and it's difficult. I drive a lot for work, but like the job. It's a toss up at this moment.

Freecycle has so much potential - I joined and then dropped it because there was a period of constant computer viruses. Also, I don't keep up a yahoo account and at that time you had to have one to join. Still true? Mine always die of neglect…