We use what?!

In my house our financial month is the 15th to the 15th. So, I've decided to run my energy challenge the same way. I am hoping to reduce our average daily kilowatt usage by 3 kilowatts. This may not seem like much but I honestly don't have a clear picture of our daily usage. Our power company estimates our bills every other month (sometimes more) and it is never close to being right! So... I'm starting with our last "actual" read where they estimated our average daily usage at 55 kilowatts which cost us $4.86/day. I read my meter at 4pm yesterday and we are starting at 85955.

Things I plan on doing to reduce our usage:
1. Only run air conditioning when necessary. We live in a new development so there are NO shade trees around my house... pity because I could definitely get away with running my air less if we had them. I should be able to turn the air off overnight through mid-morning/lunch for the coming week if the weather holds.

2. We still do not use the heated dry on the dishwasher... I don't even miss it!

3. We are using a caraffe for our coffee in the morning. I do have our coffee pot on a timer so my husband has coffee when he leaves for work (which is earlier than I get up). He transfers the coffee to the caraffe at that point, turns off the pot and unplugs it. My coffee is still burning hot hours later... love it!

4. I will not be using my dryer for our clothes. I found a folding drying rack to use for items that won't hang easily, everything else will be hung in the bathrooms to dry. I may try drying our towels with the rack outside... can't hurt to try :)

5. I am making sure everyone turns out lights when they are not in the room and we aren't using lights during the day. My girls are getting better about this! Now, if only I could convince DH to turn off the tv when he leaves the room... since that may never happen I'll focus on other things!!

This is our starting point. I'll share other things as we go through the month.

On to food... the girls and I went peach and nectarine picking yesterday. The farm that we go to uses integrated pest management which is a practice that we are comfortable with even though the fruit isn't organic. We've been going to this farm for years and there have been quite a few (this year included) that they haven't used any chemicals or pesticides to control problems with their crops. We picked 10 pounds of peaches and close to 10 pounds of nectarines. We're all looking forward to freshly picked fruit, some cobblers and some muffins!

We also hit the barn and picked up 3 of the biggest cucumbers I've ever seen. We should get a large batch of pickles from them! I'm going to play with canning some of the pickles to use as treats over the winter. I think I'll hit the farmers market next week to pick up more if all goes well - I don't think I can have too many of these pickles on hand!

Tomorrow is owner appreciation day at my market. 10% off everything in the store. I'll be there before they open waiting in line... but it will be worth it. I plan to only shop for normal items and won't stock up on much since I do a lot of our shopping at Trader Joes (even with 10% TJs is still cheaper). I do need to pick up 3 kleen kanteen water bottles for the girls to use at school, some 7th Generation pull-ups for my youngest to use at night and some other odds and ends. With any luck I'll spend under $200 when all is said and done. All I should need after that for the month is veges and occasionally some fresh fruit.

Now... on to the laundry :)