Saving money on electricity bills

With the prices for electricity going up, I had to find a way to get our bill to go down, rather than up, and I found a few ways to do this. My normal bill was generally $100-150 a month and this past month it was down to around $50. How did I do this, you maybe asking (or you may not be!!). A few things played a factor in this and here they are:

- NO LONGER USE THE DISHWASHER. Being an at home mom, I have had the time to do this and not only have I saved electricity by not using the dishwasher, but I'm also saving by not using as much hot water. I was finding that I was having to redo alot of the dishes over again because they weren't coming out clean, so I'd use twice the amount of water. Doing them by hand may be time consuming, but they get clean the first time around. This can also help to save on your water bill as well.

- USE COLD WATER FOR LAUNDRY. I use just cold water on my laundry and I compensate for the hot water helping to break up any stains by using a stain remover, like Oxi-Clean. Again I'm not using the water heater to warm the water.

- CUT DOWN ON HEAT. Rather than keeping the heat on constantly, I tend to bundle my family up. We wear extra layers during the day and we pile the blankets on the beds at night. Of course, the heating does come on but its not constantly on. We don't even really use the timer on the control panel. Another outcome of not using the heat so much is so that we, as a family, have more cuddle time. Our son is a very loving child for it.

- TURN OFF UNNECESSARY POWER SOURCES. This one is kind of obvious, but turning off lights in rooms that no-one is in helps to cut down. Also if no-one is watching the TV or using the computer, turn it off or at least leave it on stand-by if you know you are going to come back to it later on.

These are just a few ways that I can think off that I have being doing things different around the house since I've been staying at home with my kids. Whether these have been contributing factors, who knows, maybe it was just a billing error, but I would like to think that these things may have been a contributing factor.