Hot Out There? Bake Cookies in the Car!!!

114 degrees today, and a friend of mine decided to use the car as an oven for cookies! How cool is that. (Obviously, if little kids are around, be aware that this may entice them into a hot car and that would be bad!)

Directions : Have a 100 degree day, Start Early, Be around several hours later (friend said 4), Make sure you're in full sun!

Here are directions I posted earlier on using your car as a dehydrator.

And if you just think my friend is the coolest, visit her blog at The Treasures of My Heart

Duct Tape your Window AC's Accordian Vinyl Panels

Do you use window AC units? We do in the upstairs in our bedrooms at night. We program the thermostat to turn the AC to a much higher temp for the whole house at night and only use the bedroom AC window units for sleeping.

(Well, currently, we're trying to go as long as possible without it, so it's a toasty 85 in the house, but with the windows open it feels not so bad)

So that cuts us down from trying to cool 2500 square feet to 200 square feet for about 10 hours.

But, those accordion panels on the sides let in outside air and let out cool air. Not good, so how can you make that better? Duct tape. And what's nice, is duct tape comes in colors, pick the color right for you (most likely white) and seal that puppy off. No more tacky than the accordion thing. Energy efficiency goes up the less drafts you have coming from the outside (see my caulking post)

Saving Tips for the Dryer

If you've read my blog, you know that I line dry and advocate line drying, but I do use my dryer on occasion (like when it rains all week and the house is cold and humid making it take twice as long to dry and you need something, now!)

I'm guilty of just shoving clothes in the dryer without thinking, but here are a few tips on how to use less of your energy dollars when you use the dryer.

• I always shake my clothes before I line dry them, but did you know if you do that for the dryer not only will they be less wrinkled, but they take less time to dry? How did this fact escape me?
• Save up your several loads of laundry to dry and dry the lighter fabrics first, as soon as they are done, use that residual heat to dry the heavy fabric loads quicker by tossing them in right away.
• If your machine has a humidity detector, use that, but I was told by an appliance man that unless you have a really expensive machine, that humidity detector isn't the best. Check your laundry periodically through the cycle for awhile to get a feel for how quickly your machine dries the load, if your humidity sensor seems to be good, fine. If not, start using the timer set at the time your machine dries certain fabric weights.
• Always empty the lint catcher, makes your dryer work more efficiently and less chance of burning down your house. Seriously, the few seconds saved by not pulling out lint will not be worth it if you loose your possessions in a fire.
• Also, regularly check the vent from the back of your dryer to the outdoors. Same reasoning as above.
• If your clothes feel really heavy with water out of the washer, put them back in for a spin. Spinning your washer takes less energy than extra time in your dryer.
• Do not overload your dryer; do not underload your dryer. Both are electricity wasters.

Hole in Wall turned into Vent

My house's duct work is worthless, but it will cost $4,000 to redo. Not the kind of money we have at the moment for this. Essentially, the people who built our house were not that bright. But I won't go there.

So, the wall in between our h/ac unit and the stairwell gets hot because the ductwork they put in leaks so bad that this is where the heat goes. In the summer that wall is cold, in the winter hot.

Well, hubby tripped going up stairs last fall and made a hole with his shoulder or head or something (This is not the first time he has made holes in things just by walking, I've lost track on how he did this one, don't worry, we don't visit china shops). And I've been lazy and putting off pulling out the joint compound just to patch this.

Well, we took a break from using the wood stove this past week and I noticed that this hole let all that stuck furnace heat out. It helped tremendously to heat the upstairs; it's almost too hot up there! So I'm thinking, why patch it up, let's use it!

So, I found the nearest stud and cut the hole to be even with it.

Took a register cover we salvaged from another house, painted it with the closest colored spray paint in our inventory, and screwed it in. Viola!

Now, I'm thinking, I'll put another one in on the other side of the wall for the downstairs and when I want the heat or cooling that gets stuck in that wall to go up or downstairs, I'll open one and shut the other. One of these days we have to pay for new ducting, but this will work to make use of the lost energy for now.

Clothes Drying as Humidifier

We mostly use wood heat to heat our house with a lovely soapstone stove my Mother and Stepfather graciously let us have. But it's a dry heat. So! Another reason to dry your clothes inside, put some of that moisture back into the air sans electricity.

(No, I don't put the clothes that close to the fire, they're just their temporarily for the photo op.)

Clothes or Noodle Dryer

So, I made my first batch of homemade noodles with the pasta machine I found at a flea market. I didn't realize that the dough had to sit for 30 minutes before going through the machine, so I used boxed pasta for dinner instead of cooking it fresh and I needed a pasta dryer rack that I wasn't anticipating needing at the moment. So, I thought of using my clothes rack.

Don't think I'll even bother making a specific one, this will keep me from having an extra appliance to have to store and collect dust. I'll just wipe it down between different applications if necessary.

(P.S. When I woke up, my noodles were cracking and falling off on their own. My cat (in the bottom left corner of the picture) thought this was amusing and would push on the rack and make more fall. SO, homemade noodle makers out there, does this normally happen? I will admit that these noodles were not made according to a recipe since my little booklet was in another language and measurement system so I just eyeballed the picture and made it, have yet to try them. Plus, if you have a great noodle recipe, please share in the comment section.)

Reader Suggestion Friday - Egg Carton Fire Starters

Robin was kind enough to send in her directions on using egg cartons, old candles and dryer lint for making Fire Starters. I like the tear away aspect of these instructions.

"I save the cardboard egg cartons, fill with dryer lint (or wood shavings or small pinecones) then pour in melted wax (from old candles) until is full or starts to soak through the outside. Let harden. To use just tear off one or two cups place in the center of your kindling cover with some paper and wood and carefully light one corner of the cup. It will hold the flame long enough for the wood to catch fire. These can easily be stored up and a bunch made at a time. I have several friends that give me the lint, the containers and wax in exchange for the finished starters.

Mow the Lawn without Gas

We were gifted with a reel push mower. You might think that it was replaced with a gas mower because it didn't work well or that it took too much effort, but the modern ones to me seem to be the same amount of work to mow the lawn as it is with a gas powered one. (Obviously, I have a ride on mower since I mow 5 acres of lawn, but this works on small areas I want to mow without getting the ride-on out.)

Plus, in the eight years I have been married we have gone through 3 lawn mowers, at minimum $100 each plus gas, oil, spark plugs and maintenance, (One kept losing its wheel nut, so we went through probably 5 bolts on that one, extra blades, and even a wheel tearing the sheet metal off making us go to a junk yard for a body to install the motor on). That's quite expensive and frustrating.

This isn't for lazy mowers though or people with huge lawns (half an acre or less is ideal). You have to keep up with the lawn, can't let it grow into a forest, otherwise you will have to haul out the gas powered one, but maybe that could be a motivator to get out and do it. It also doesn't do well on stick weeds it needs to be an actual lawn not scrub brush territory or get out there and mow before the weeds get big enough to become stick-like.

Here's a good site to research them if you are interested.
Heck, even Walmart carries them.

Car Dehydrator

Don't have a dehydrator but would like to make fruit leather or dehydrate fruit and veggies? To make sure you get appropriate temperatures, just setting out in the sun can make it difficult, but if you have an automobile and it is high temperature summer time, you have a dehydrator.

Prepare your fruit roll up mixture and pour in a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Put cheesecloth over the pan (not touching) to keep bugs off. For veggies and fruit, put sliced pieces on a cooling rack in a baking pan and cover with cheesecloth.

Put food in back window in the sun. Leave window cracked to let moisture out.

Thin sliced fruit and fruit leather should dry in about 6 hours of hot sun in the car. Large pieces (like half of an apricot) could take up to 2 days.

When should I turn off lights?

So we have all drilled it in out brains and the brains of household members to turn off lights when they leave a room, but when should we do that considering we may return to that room soon?

We have a competition between the price of the bulb, the shortened life span of a bulb being turned off and on, and the price of electricity to keep the bulb on.

April 2009 Reader's Digest made a distinction between incandescent bulbs and the new CFL bulbs.

Incandescent bulbs are cheap to buy but more costly to keep on. Turning these off more often shortens their life span but they are cheaper to replace than the electricity they sap being turned on. The CFL bulbs are more costly to buy and cheaper to keep on. Turning these off less often is good if you return shortly to the work area because you don't want to have to replace these costly ones as often.

Reader's Digest gave this rule of thumb:
Turn off incandescents if you will be gone more than 5 seconds.
Turn off fluorescents if you will be gone more than 15 minutes.

Saving Electricity from the Electric Vampire and bonus Surge Protector Information

According to the April 2009 edition of Reader's Digest, $4 billion dollars is spent to pay for electricity no one is using.

Take a look at what you have plugged in. Does it have a little light on it? That little light sucks electricity. Can it be turned on by a remote? That capacity to be always ready for a remote control to turn it on sucks electricity. Do you leave your computer on all day? Not only does that suck electricity, but the computer brains can't reboot and can muck up the computer's workings (I have had a computer guy tell me that sometimes when he is called to fix a computer all it needed was to be turned off and turned on again.)

So. Take a look at what you can unplug. Like my battery charger, it only needs to be plugged in when I am recharging batteries, but I have often left it in to sap money. If you have an entertainment center, consider putting it all into a surge protector strip (good to possibly save you from power surges too) and turn the surge protector off every night.

My microwave has a clock that I never set, leaving that plugged in costs me money; that's next on my list, to get it set up where I turn its electricity sapping quality off instead of draining pennies from me.

I asked the computer guy about surge protectors when I had to have my modem replaced when it was hit by lightning (plugged into my surge protector which was on). He said the surge protector only gives you a bit more chance not to get fried machines from power surges from the company. He says turning it off doesn't kill the protection because now it doesn't need protection because it isn't drawing power. As to them being able to save you from lightning, they really can't do that well, he actually suggested if you want to be as safe as possible to unplug the surge protector during a storm although that isn't 100% effective either because he said he once had to replace a modem that he could see the burn mark left from the jump from the outlet to the modem nearby.

Vacuum Seal with a Straw

I have yet to find the cost of a food vacuum sealer palatable, so I use a straw to try to avoid freezer burn and spoilage. I put the left over food I want to put in the freezer in a ziploc bag, insert my straw, snap the ziploc up to the straw and suck air out. As I get to the end, I suck, pull out the straw and as quick as possible seal the rest of the way all at the same time. May not be as good as a vacuum sealer, but would bet it's 80% as good, and virtually costless. I do save the straw unless I stick it in something nasty accidentally.

Paint the Propane Tank

My propane tank with my new house was tangled with vines and rusty. Never had a propane tank before, so I called the company that I rent it from and asked if that was ok if I painted it so it would look nicer and what kind of paint to use to do so.

They not only told me it was ok (White or Silver paint is best), but that if I did it, to give them a call and let them know, they would check to be sure I did it and then they would take off the $60 rental fee for the year. So, left over white flat primer house paint and an hour of sanding off the gunk and an hour of painting equals a free year of propane tank rental.

So, if your propane tank needs painting, call your company and see if they won't do the same for you.

Laundry Hot Water - Cleaning Power vs. Energy Efficiency

Should you or should you not use hot water in your washing machine? That is the question.

There are many facets to this question.
1) How will this affect my energy consumption?
2) How can I best disinfect my laundry?
3) How can I get my laundry to come out clean?
4) How will this affect my washing machine?

1) Energy Consumption - Obviously, hot water is added energy cost. You gotta heat up the water, but how much does it cost? This wonderfully thorough site gives an in-depth breakdown of electricity uses by the temperature of the water you use in your type of washing machine. According to this site, if I have the typical electricity costs, I save 55 cents every time I choose to do cold/cold instead of hot/warm or $215 over the course of the year. Also, see that same site for a discussion of electricity costs of a front loader vs. a top loader.

So, Cold water is cheaper; yeah for cold water.

2) Disinfecting - If you are relying on hot water to kill the bacteria and other harmful buggies in your clothing, think again. Yes, hot water or hot temperatures will kill off bacteria, people even, but not the hot water that comes from your water heater, it's not hot enough. You need it to be boiling before it would reach any kind of efficacy at killing bacteria in your laundry. It might get some of them, but not the majority of them. You have two options, bleach or the sun. Yeah for the sun! Free disinfectant in your backyard, my fellow clothesline hangers. Both, however, can harm clothing. I think everyone knows what a bleach spill will do to your clothing, but the sun if given too much time will do damage too, think of the item you left in the car's back seat window. This site gives you the scientific reasoning for how the sun is a disinfectant and why it is a better option than bleach. So a hot water washing cycle does not kill off all those scary things you are worried about floating in your fibers.

Yeah for cold water, does maybe only slightly worse than hot water at disinfecting laundry.

3) Cleaning Power - Hot water does work better at getting out and breaking up dirt and grime. Hot water doesn't kill anything in your laundry, but it does help release dirt and gunk in your clothing, that gunk that might be encapsulating some of that bacteria you want to get rid of. Why? Because it's hot. Heat is something in school you added to things in your chemistry labs to create reactions, right? It does the same in laundry; it increases the speed and reactions of the molecules of the detergent and dirty laundry dirt and increases the solubility of the dirt you are trying to get rid of. In other words it makes your detergent work better as described here.

Yeah for hot water, the superhero sidekick to laundry detergent.

4) The Washing Machine - What about your workhorse, the washing machine? You know, I would think the items which job is to get things clean should be clean, but they aren't - Every time I have to clean that grimy soap film off my bathtub I am reminded that self cleaning tubs would be nice. The washing machine needs cleaned too. I was told this by the Maytag washing machine repair man that visited me many years ago to fix the broken belt on my washing machine. He made a comment that the move to washing all in cold is giving him more business because the gunk buildup in the inner parts of the machine create chaos. He advised not to go completely cold if I wanted to avoid seeing him again. For the same reason that hot water works at getting gunk off your clothes, it gets the gunk off the inner recesses of your washing machine where your dirty water flows out. Plus if you are using too much detergent (basically if you are using the amount of detergent your brand is telling you to - think, the more they use, the faster they have to buy more) your build up can really cause problems. He only suggested I stick with doing a hot water load with my whites as a reminder, but this site gives some more detailed instructions on cleaning your washer periodically to keep it running well. Which reminds me, there is leafy mold-like crud hanging around the washing machine's top gasket downstairs; need to clean that sucker.

Yeah for hot water keeping the expensive repair man away!

2 votes for cold, 2 for hot-- we have a tie!

So for me, I run hot water every now and then when I know I have a heavily soiled load of laundry (diapers, work clothes) to boost my detergent's cleaning power and to keep my machine running well for longer. Yet the rest of the time I run cold water to avoid the high cost of heating water, and I hang my clothing out to dry because it's a free disinfectant; I would be silly not to take advantage of the sun and its disinfecting qualities when it saves me the cost of the dryer, which costs tons more than this whole hot water issue.

Line Drying Indoors

Drying your clothes on a line not only saves you money, but saves your clothes and avoids much static cling.

Outside I have a clothesline strung between three trees. Yesterday, I was silly enough to hang them out in a 45 mph wind and one of the strings snapped, so I would not advise doing that! :)

When it is yucky outside, or night time or there are 45 mph winds that take off pieces of your roofing which should make you think you ought not hang them out, I hang them inside.

I have 3 drying racks.

And a retractable clothesline. I have a fairly large open downstairs, so I can get quite a bit of distance. If I didn't, I think I would hang it on one wall in one corner, put a hook on the other side of the room in the middle and the end hook on the opposite corner of the first wall making 2 lines in a "v" shape for more surface area. The clothesline retracts and the mechanism fold up against the wall hopefully pretty inconspicuously. I have also heard of people putting two large hooks in their ceiling and hanging a storable dowel rod on the hooks and hanging their clothes on plastic hangars.

Since I have started doing this, I have noticed about a pretty persistent $30 less a month in electric bills as compared to last year. It may not all be the dryer, but my guess is most of it is. I have not accidentally shrunk anything or inadvertently set in a stain I missed. The sun does wonders for stains, just pin that garment in the place where the sun shines the most and most if not all will come out regardless of pretreating. I rarely have static cling, what I do have must just be from the dry air of the house.

My mother used to hang laundry and as a teen I couldn't stand "cardboard" feel jeans. I really didn't want to do this initially because I didn't want those cardboard jeans. Well, using less detergent and natural or homemade detergent keeps that from happening. And of course, if you put them out on a highly windy day they get dry very fast and are very soft from all the wind beating they take!

Open Your Curtains - they aren't just decoration.

There are 2 good energy reasons to use your curtains for more than just decoration.

1) During the winter, it is free heat. I don't think this is something new to anybody, that if you open your curtains the sunlight will warm the house, but I don't think we get into the habit of it. Make it a point in the morning routine to walk around the house and open your curtains, shut them at night. The amount of time you spend doing this will be more than compensated for the less time your furnace has to kick on.

During the summer, the opposite is true, close those puppies during the heat of the day.

2) Why are we using electricity to light lightbulbs during the day? I am guilty of turning on lights during the day instead of walking over and pulling up the blinds. How lazy am I? I think you just have to make yourself get into the habit.

Make yourself get into the habit of daily opening and closing curtains.

Water Heater Insulation Blanket

I installed a water heater insulation blanket on my water heater. I put one on the last house and noticed that it seemed that the water heater was able to maintain and reheat faster. We did this because in the winter it seemed that the hot showers kept getting shorter and shorter and the length of time we had to wait between showers so the next person could have a hot bath was getting longer. I am sure it saves energy and money as well. Both of out heaters have been located on a porch/utility room type area that is colder than the rest of the house.

It is quite simple to put up.

At your hardware store near the water heater stuff or weather stripping stuff, you can find a water heater insulation blanket (this one has an R factor of 5).

A few minutes later, your water heater is snuggled up in its blanket.

Making Produce Last Longer - Crisper Humidity Controls

I have a two door crisper in my refrigerator that has knobs to control humidity.

So, I set out to find what should go where so my produce will last longer.

High Humidity:
beans
leafy veggies
asparagus
celery
cucumber
broccoli
green onions
berries
pears
mushrooms (should be stored in a brown paper sack)

Low Humidity:
melons
tomatoes
citrus
garlic
onions
gourds

Then to remind me, I wrote them on sticky labels and attached them to the drawers, so I and the rest of the household will put the stuff in the appropriate drawers.

Close the Dryer Door

Is your utility room cold? Do you close the dryer door after you are through using it? If not, do so, otherwise you have given cold air direct access into your house.

My utility room is exceptionally cold this year, and I knew I was able to keep it warmer last year. One, my breaker box really needs to be redone and insulated, but for now I replaced the shipping tape "sealer" around the edge where it meets the wall that hubby forgot to tell me he ripped off when changing some breakers.

Then when it was still cold, I had to think for awhile and then realized it was my wide open dryer that was continuing to make it cold.

Use Baking to Warm the House

With all the baking about to be done, don't forget to lower the heat in the house a bit or bake during the colder part of the day (mornings), and after you're done baking and have turned off the oven, leave the oven door ajar to let the left over heat warm up the house. No sense keeping it inside just to keep the oven warm!

Obviously do not do this if there are little ones running around.