Live Cheap, Save Big

Now that fall is upon us, you don’t need to blast the AC all night. Open your window, the air is
crisp and cool and best of all it’s free! That’s 8 hours a night that you don’t have to use your air conditioning from October until March depending on where you live and, of course, Mother Nature.  Potentially that could equal a 33% savings on your AC bill for those 6 months! Why not try it out? It might work for you and it might not, but it certainly seems worth a try.

Next time your shower head gets clogged, don’t scream in terror at the
thought of having to pay a plumber to fix it.  Using simple household items you can easily unclog your own shower head.  A 1-to-1 solution of warm water and white vinegar will do the trick.  Unscrew the shower head and submerge it in the solution for a few hours, or overnight if you have the time.  If you can’t unscrew the shower head, place the solution in a ziploc bag and tie it around the shower head.  Also try using denture-cleaning tablets to achieve the same results.  Designed to remove grime and stubborn deposits from dentures, they should do a bang-up job of removing build-up in your shower head. So the next time your shower head gets clogged, don’t go psycho!  Try one of these easy and cheap fix-its to get that water flowing nice and strong again.

Combining energy conservation, weight loss, and money saving can be done with a few degrees in the right direction.

The temperature: Air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter may make you less cranky, but they may also make you fatter. If you’re in a cool room in winter, for example, your body has to do more metabolic work to get your temperature up to normal. Nothing replaces a good old-fashioned workout for calorie burning, but lowering your thermostat setting a bit in winter and tipping it a smidge higher in summer may boost your baseline calorie burn. [via RealAge]

Boy, that thermostat is the source of so many good LCSBs.

Freshhome offers 5 tips [via Lifehacker] to making any room in your home look bigger without spending big bucks.

Let the light into the room too. Buy letting the natural light flow into the room, you will be surprised at how this will open up the room and make it look larger. If you do not have a lot of natural light, you can add some lighting features to the room to make it look bigger. You will be amazed at how this small addition can make a big difference.

This list summarizes some of the lest ways to make the best use of the resources you have available in your home. Any other ideas - hit us up in the comments.

Breaking a lease agreement can end up costing you a lot of money. It is almost always in the contract and most landlords ask that you sign a 1-year agreement. Msn real estate suggests a variety of ways you can get out of your lease, including negotiating an early release clause:

Most early-release clauses state that in case of early departure, the tenant owes one or two months of extra rent or will be responsible for payments until a new tenant is found, whichever happens first. The tenant’s security deposit may also be forfeited, if allowed by the state. This may sound painful, but keep in mind that we’re talking about breaking a legally binding contract, and try to be humble.

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Most homes don’t have smart thermostats and only keep the temperature at a single location. Since they are usually located on the main floor in the middle of the house the temperature varies from the top floor to the basement.

The average temperature can be maintained easier - and you can give your AC and wallet a break - by closing the doors to bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage spaces located on the east and west of your home.

Doing so traps that warm air coming from the sun towards the exterior and away from your thermostat. Keeping the door open to a bedroom during the day when you are at work causes warm air to bleed out. The average temperature will rise, alerting the AC it’s time to crank on again.

Keep in mind to also turn your thermostat up (or down) by 2 degrees Fahrenheit when you can, close your curtains, and follow the DOE’s advice on home energy efficiency to cut down on you electricity bill (and help the environment)!

The Power-Save 1200 is a small box that attaches to your breaker panel and is designed to save you up to 25% on you electricity bill. It does this by storing energy that would be typically lost through use of air conditioning, dishwashers, washers and other household appliances which use inductive motors. They explain:

The technology applied by the Power-Save 1200™ Unit supplies that stored electricity back to your inductive loads, thus causing you to decrease your demand from the utility. If you decrease your demand from the utility, your meter slows down, and you use less electricity. The thought is, you’ve already paid for that electricity, why pay for it and waste it when you can pay for it, store it, and reuse it again. This whole process is called power factor optimization.

I am very curious to buy this device and see if it can really save me up to 25% on my monthly energy bill. Three factors weigh heavy in me wanting to try this product for myself: it is UL listed, recognized by the Department of Energy and was featured on WBAL Radio in Baltimore.

As we all know, paper towels aren’t cheap and they always seem to run out so fast. The reason is because we use a whole paper towel when a half piece might be all we need. Is it really necessary to use a whole paper towel to dry our hands? We also don’t need a whole paper towel to use as a napkin with dinner or a whole sheet to wipe up a small spill. If you tear your paper towels in half, they’ll last twice as long. You might be thinking you could eliminate the whole tearing process by buying select-a-size paper towels. However, you pay for the extra perforations in the roll. Here’s what I found on a discount website: (more…)

By adding a few teaspoons of regular dishwashing liquid to a gallon of water, you can make an environmentally safe bug spray for pennies on the dollar. This low tech insecticide [via Curbly] is not for the squeamish as it basically works to suffocate these garden pesks. It may take longer but it will get the job done.  So all you garden buffs, make your own dirt cheap insecticide and stop releasing harmful chemicals into the environment you enjoy so much.