Almostgotit.com

Good news!  The utility company has given us a couple months off its billing cycle.  The poor thing still can’t decide how to bill the Almostgotits, as our low meter readings always make it suspicious (we heat with wood).   

The only thing is, we got our woodstove a couple years too early to qualify for Obama’s 30% tax credit for energy efficiency.    Ah well, we ALMOST got it!!

Saving money and saving the planet make wonderful bedfellows, so here’s six ways you can do both, just for today:

1. Hang your laundry out to dry.  If you don’t have a clothes line, buy one or just tie a rope between a couple of trees.  Clothes dryers are one of the biggest consumers of a home’s total energy use.  And yes, you can even hang your clothes up indoors!
2. Skip Starbucks for a day and find an Earth Day event to do instead  (or)
3. Do a fun Earth Day project with your kids at home.
4. Plant a vegetable garden!  Tomatoes and beans are the easiest of all, grow practically anywhere, and your own, home-grown vegetable plants are so gorgeous and satisfying.  Plus also, you’ll have great tasting food for much less than what you’d pay at the store!
5. Stock your freezer.  You’ll save money and energy by reducing your trips to the grocery store.  You’ll also reduce the temptation to eat out (more car trips, more money spent) because you’ll have things to eat at home.  And finally, freezers use less energy when they’re full, too. 
6. Plug your TV into a power bar.  Many appliances draw electricity even when they are turned off, so using a power bar can make a real difference in energy savings.

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Related posts:

5 Ways to work greener & cheaper 

11 Ways to be cheap in honor of Earth Day

Laundry and spring break and blogging: oh my!

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We spent Easter with dear friends, and we were put in charge of the ham.

It’s not difficult to find ham in Tennessee, but there’s plain old ham and there’s delicious, yummy, breathtakingly *good* ham.

So once a year or so, we have been in the habit of visiting a certain store which I shall not name here for legal reasons.

At Christmas and Easter, the lines are so long that the store moves its cash registers to a booth outside, and hires a police officer to manage the traffic going in and out of the small parking lot. I went a little earlier this year to get my ham, and had to stand in line anyway.

I shuffled past the displays of side dishes and flavored mustards, declined the free sample of smoked turkey breast, and finally arrived at the counter where I ordered a smallish half-ham. My mouth watered as the clerk presented me with the fragrant, foil-wrapped prize, which he opened for my inspection.

Ah.

“Yes, that will be fine,” I said, politely swallowing my drool. I only peeked at the price as I was walking to the teller. I had just selected a *FIFTY DOLLAR* ham.

$51.27, to be perfectly exact.

That’s 25 meals at a local homeless shelter. A week of groceries for some American families. Half a month’s wage in rural Russia. Two and a half flocks of ducks for Heifer project. A year’s worth of learning materials for 11.4 school children in Zimbabwe (or 5 school children in either Mozambique and Rwanda). Four complete sets of immunizations for children in Haiti.

And part of one wonderful, celebratory meal a year for eight good friends in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Do you struggle with things like this, too?